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 Services EASS

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Stevenage Borough Council is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons:

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Incorrect use of ARIA labels

Incorrect use of ARIA label on home page 'top task' and 'all services' tabs. This means that the purpose of these elements and the type of content that is available is not accurately described. This fails WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.

Text not included in an ARIA landmark (relates to 'Skip to content' and Alert Banner)

Landmark roles provide information about page structure and can help assistive technology users with in-page navigation. Having text outside of the landmarks will make it more difficult for some visitors to navigate a page. This fails WCAG 2.1 Technique ARIA11: Using ARIA landmarks to identify regions of a page and Technique ARIA20: Using the region role to identify a region of the page

Scrollable element is not keyboard accessible (relates to any tables)

Visitors who cannot easily use a mouse may use a keyboard or keyboard alternative for navigation will not be able to navigate tables. This fails WCAG 2.1: Understanding Success Criterion 2.1.1: Keyboard

Hidden element has focusable content (relates to carousel on home page)

Focusable page elements are those that visitors can interact with using a keyboard or other device – such a links, checkboxes, buttons and form fields, The element has been removed from the reading order but not the focus order which could result in a confusing experience for screen-reader users. This fails WCAG 2.1 Understanding Success Criterion 1.3.1: Info and Relationships and 4.1.2 : Name, Role, Value

We are working with our web supplier to resolve these issues by 12 March 2021.

PDF and other documents

Many of our PDFs don’t meet accessibility standards – for example they may not be structured to make them accessible to a screen reader – this does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2.

The reading order of some pdf documents have not been set correctly. These do not meet WCAG Reference:1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence (Level A) and 2.4.3 Focus Order (Level A).

Form Controls – PDF Incorrect labels. There are form controls within some pdf documents which do not have descriptive text for screen reader users.WCAG Reference:1.3.1 Info and Relationships(Level A) and 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (Level A).

Any PDFs that are essential to providing services, for example forms or information leaflets, will be replaced with online forms or html pages. We are currently working on these issues.

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. For example, we do not plan to fix our Local Plan examination documents as these are reference documents that date back to 2017.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2020. It was reviewed on 4 February and 25 February 2021.

This website was last tested 13 August 2020 by the Digital Accessibility Centre (DAC). The accessibility issues with the code highlighted by the DAC have been addressed and the site will be re-tested week commencing 22 March 2021.

We have SiteImprove web monitoring software in place and have used Axe 4.7.1 to check the accessibility of this website.

Elections and Voting