Accessibility Statement

We want everyone who visits our website to be able to access the full range of services available, regardless of their skill or technology.

How accessible the site is

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible.

There are known issues with the:

  • HTML: the underlying code used to create the website
  • CSS: used to describe how HTML is shown on the pages
  • JavaScript: a development language used to program some areas of the site
  • 3rd party functionality: areas of the site which are developed by external 3rd party companies
  • content: this includes web page content or documents

What to do if you have problems or queries

If you have any accessibility problems or feedback, please use our contact us page.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you're not happy with how we respond, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Durham Council Council is committed to making our website accessible, in accordance with The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Under the Equality Act 2010 we must ensure we do not unlawfully discriminate in our service delivery and make reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities where necessary. We are constantly working to improve the accessibility and usability of our site.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Information about which areas of the website fail.

Roadmap

A program of work is now underway to address issues, involving both our in-house developers and designers, and the companies who provide 3rd party functionality.

We aim to resolve the following by January 2024:

Main site

  • document titles: some documents have no title failing success criterion 2.4.2
  • documents: PDFs are not tagged so are not accessible by screen readers, failing success criterion 1.3.1
  • some images/figures do not have an alt tag, failing success criterion 1.1.1
  • some elements do not contain text or an IMG with an alt attribute, failing success criteria 2.4.4, 2.4.9 and 4.1.2

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

  • PDFs/documents (pre-September 2018): PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 or documents that are not essential to providing our services
  • pre-recorded audio and video published before 23 September 2020

How we test the site

We re-assess a website or system for accessibility whenever it undergoes a major modification.

We check all new content we add.