Accessibility statement | Sevenoaks District Council

Accessibility statement

We make every effort to ensure our website is easy to use and accessible for everyone.

Change your accessibility settings


Accessibility statement for Sevenoaks District Council’s websites

Our websites provide information and allow people to access our services.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use our websites. For example, on our main website, you should be able to:

  • Change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • Zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.


How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • Most older PDFs documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • Some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • You cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader on some of our sites


What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days or sooner.

If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page or on any map, call us on 01732 227000 or email information@sevenoaks.gov.uk for help.
 

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact communications@sevenoaks.gov.uk
 

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).


Contacting us in person

Our offices have audio induction loops

Find out how to contact us.
 

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

We are committed to making our websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Website testing is ongoing, but we know some of our our sites are partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances.

We are working with our suppliers to better understand the problems and, where possible, make changes by September 2020.

 

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Many of our older PDFs, Word and Excel documents do not meet accessibility standards, for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services and forms published as Word and PDF documents. We are working to either fix these or replace the most downloaded documents with accessible documents by September 2020.

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish on our main site will meet accessibility standards.
 

Testing our websites

Our websites below have been tested or will be tested in early 2020.

This statement was last updated on 30 December 2019.