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Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to nelincs.gov.uk. This website is run by North East Lincolnshire Council (NELC) and we want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • Navigate and browse the site using non-pointing devices, such as keyboards, switches, voice or sip and puff devices
  • zoom in to at least 500% without the text spilling off the screen
  • Adjust the size of fonts using your browser or operating system settings
  • Be informed in advance if a link contains a document or directs you to another site
  • Visually determine which element has keyboard focus, at all times
  • listen to all of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver or TalkBack)
  • Access this site with your chosen combination of device, browser and assistive technology
  • Have an easy way to contact us in the event you discover an issue on our site, that prevents you or someone else accessing a part of our site

How accessible this website is:

This site is fully compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Level AA

  • All content is contained in landmarks, and all HTML is validated against the HTML specification these meet SC 1.3.1 Info and Relationships – Level A
  • All content follows a correct reading sequence, which meets SC 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence – Level A
  • We do not rely upon sensory characteristics (such as click the green button) anywhere on this site, this meets SC 1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics – Level A
  • The site can be used in any orientation, which meets SC 1.3.4 Orientation – Level A
  • A user can zoom to at least 500%
  • Text can be resized, beyond 200%, without loss of content, this meets SC 1.4.4 Resize Text – Level AA
  • Colour is never used as a sole means of conveying information, this meets SC 1.4.1 Use of Color – Level AA
  • All text has a minimum contrast ratio of SC 4.5:1, this meets Contrast minimum – Level A
  • The website has been tested to reflow to a single column and not have 2-dimensional scrolling at a viewport width of 320 pixels, this meets SC 1.4.10 Reflow – Level AA
  • Text spacing can be resized using common browser plugins or tools, this meets SC 1.4.12 text-spacing – Level AA
  • All functionality is available to keyboard users, this meets SC 2.1.1 keyboard – Level A and SC 2.1.3 (Keyboard No Exception) Level AAA
  • A keyboard user will never become trapped within any user interface component, this meets SC 2.1.2 No Keyboard Trap – Level A
  • There are no site-specific character keyboard shortcuts and this passes SC 2.1.4 Character key Shortcuts – Level A
  • There are no animations or carousels on this site and the only content that flashes on this system is the standard text input indicator on form inputs and this is below the threshold, this meets SC 2.3.1 Three Flashes or Below Threshold – Level A, SC 2.3.2 Three Flashes Level AAA and Animations from Interactions Level AAA
  • A ‘Skip Link’ is present and all content is available in landmarks, this meets SC 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks – Level A
  • Each page has a unique title, this meets SC 2.4.2 page Titled – Level A
  • The focus order is always representative of the visual order, this meets SC 2.4.3 Focus Order
  • There is a Search present, as well as a menu and a site map located in the footer this meets SC 2.4.5 Multiple Ways – Level AA
  • All content is structured with headings and labels, this meets SC 2.4.6 Headings and Labels – Level AA
  • We have implemented an enhanced visual focus indicator to every interactive element, which meets SC 2.4.7 Focus Visible Level A
  • There is breadcrumbs navigation present, which will inform a user of their location within the system, this meets SC 2.4.8 Location – Level AAA
  • No change of context will ever occur on a down event, this meets SC 2.5.2 Pointer cancellation – Level A
  • All control labels have a visible name that matches the accessible name, this meets SC 2.5.3 Label in Name – Level A
  • The site language is set, this meets SC 3.1.1 Language of Page – Level A
  • Navigation and interactive components are consistently names, across the site, this meets SC 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation – Level AA and SC 3.2.4 Consistent Identification – Level AA
  • All pages tested pass HTML validation, with no errors, this meets SC 4.1.1 Parsing – Level A
  • Where a link points to a downloadable document, the file size & file type are available in the link text, in addition, there is a paperclip icon ( ) which visually indicates an attachment and this icon has hidden text, so it is also available to users of screen readers. Where a link points to an external site, we use the external link icon ( ), which also has hidden text to convey the same information to users of screen readers, these meet SC 2.4.9 Link purpose (Link Only) – Level AAA
  • All sections have headings and these headings use a logical heading hierarchy, this meets SC 2.4.10 Section Headings – Level AAA

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

Email: [email protected]

Address: Municipal Offices, Town Hall Square, Grimsby, DN31 1HU

The council will consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.

The council is always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think the council is not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact [email protected]

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 the council responds to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) .

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

The Municipal Offices have audio induction loops and this facility is available at: North East Lincolnshire Council, Municipal Offices, Town Hall Square, Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, DN31 1HU.

The Municipal Offices Reception is open Monday to Friday from 9 am to 4pm (excluding bank holidays) currently offering a limited service.

Our phone lines are open Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 5pm (excluding bank holidays).

Find out how to contact us: NELC – Contact us

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The North East Lincolnshire Council are 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 fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard .

The NE Lincs platform was tested using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Evaluation Method (WCAG-EM) and we tested this site against the full WCAG 2.1 AAA criteria. The site has no known accessibility violations against either Level A or Level AA on any of the pages tested. We have met several AAA requirements, which were part of our dedication to providing a platform for the whole community, to access.

Non-accessible content

Whilst the platform itself is accessible, we are aware there are some issues that are part of the WCAG 2.1 AA specification, but are exempt under the PSBAR regulations

  • Some documents, published post September 23rd 2018 are not accessible, we have a small team working through the backlog and we have significantly reduced the number of documents on our site, from around 12,000 to 2,500, in favour of HTML and we will continue to do this
  • Some third-party tools have not been made accessible, we are expecting updates from our suppliers and accessibility statements, we will upload those statements as soon as our suppliers have provided us with them

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

As of current time of review this website is fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 (AA).

Disproportionate burden

None.

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

All PDFs and other office file formats that were published before 23 September 2018 are not in the scope of the regulations, however, we will review all attachments where possible and replace with HTML as part of our continuous improvement process across our digital portfolio. Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Videos that were published before 23 September 2020 do not have captions and an audio description. Any new videos will only be published with these features, in order to provide pre-recorded media that can be accessed by everybody.

What the council are doing to improve accessibility

  • Our development Team designed a significantly more inclusive site, with accessibility at the core of the design
  • Our Web Team completely redesigned all of the content and pages, with accessibility at the forefront of their project
  • We reduced the amount of downloadable attachments on our site, in favour of HTML and will continue to adopt this strategy
  • We performed technical investigations into the accessibility of plugins made available to our Web Team, to ensure that any editing tools used would not introduce new accessibility issues

We conducted testing on components, page templates and content pages, as well as several core pages.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2020 It was last reviewed on 12 September 2023.

This website was last tested on 12 September 2023. The test was carried out by a member of North East Lincolnshire Council’s Web Team. You can access the report on the accessibility report page.

We used this approach to deciding on a sample of pages to test manual selection based upon web traffic, random selection using a random number generator. We tested 20 pages, which are listed here:

Third-party accessibility statements

Please find linked the accessibility statements for third-party suppliers we use for certain functionality on our website. Examples are, we do not develop our forms in-house, we use suppliers that we purchase customer relationship management (CRM) systems from. We are working closely with our suppliers to meet the accessibility standards and we will update this section as more accessibility statements become available to us.

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