South Norfolk Leisure Website Accessibility Policy
Accessibility statement for the Broadland and South Norfolk councils’ websites
This accessibility statement applies to the website www.southnorfolkleisure.co.uk.
This website is run by Broadland District Council and South Norfolk Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
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- change colours, contrast levels and fonts
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- zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
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- navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
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- navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
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- 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.
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
How accessible this website is
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
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- text is clipped when zoomed to 200% when the browser window width is reduced to 745px
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- links are not clearly identifiable as they don’t have a secondary visual indicator on hover
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- most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
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- some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
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- we have links to some of our systems operated by third party suppliers which are not fully accessible at this time
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:
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- email: council@southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk
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- freephone: 0800 3896109
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.
If you cannot plan your journey using the google maps link on our ‘contact us’ page, call or email us for directions.
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, you can contact our Web Services Lead by:
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- email: council@southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk
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- or select the ‘website’ option on our general enquiry form
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 by phone or visiting us in person
Information about contacting Broadland District Council or South Norfolk Council can be found on this page: Find out how to contact us.
Both our offices have audio induction loops in their council chambers as well as portable units for other areas.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Broadland District Council and South Norfolk Council are committed to making their 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 due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.
Non accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
When text is zoomed to 200% and the browser window width is 745px, some text is clipped which fails criterion 1.4.4 (Resize text). We have engaged with our website supplier (Jadu) to fix this by Friday 8 April 2022.
Some links don’t have a secondary visual indicator on hover, which fails criterion 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context). We have engaged with our website supplier (Jadu) to fix this by Friday 8 April 2022.
Colour contrast is not sufficient on the ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ buttons when page navigation is disabled. This fails criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum). We have engaged with our website supplier (Jadu) to fix this by Friday 8 April 2022.
Colour contrast is not sufficient on My Alerts emails when devices are in dark mode, which fails criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum). We are currently working to fix this issue by Friday 8 April 2022.
Visible label and accessible names don’t match on our Leisure site, which fails criterion 2.53 Label in Name. We have engaged with our website supplier (Jadu) to fix this by Friday 8 April 2022.
Our garden waste bin collection calendars (PDF) have no tags, no alternative text, missing headings, irregular tables and missing table headers. This fails criteria: 1.1.1 Non-text Content, 1.3.1 Info and Relationships, 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence, 2.4.3 Focus Order, 2.4.6 Headings and Labels, 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value. We will publish accessible garden waste calendars in March 2022 when the current calendars expire. In the meantime, customers can request the current calendar in an alternative format.
Disproportionate burden
PDFs and other documents
We have prioritised making accessible existing PDFs and other documents (eg in Word) published from January 2021 on www.southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk as well as making any new documents that we publish complaint. All documents (PDF, Word format etc) that are downloadable forms used for active administrative processes will be made compliant irrespective of their original publication date. We want to keep PDFs and other documents on the website for public transparency and will provide alternative versions upon request.
We have undertaken a detailed assessment and estimate in total for both councils (Broadland District Council and South Norfolk Council) that approximately 1784 PDF documents remain non-compliant. It takes approximately 3 hours to review and make a document accessible. To fix the 1784 documents that are within scope would take approximately 723 working days at a cost of approximately £100,324 in staff costs. The majority of these documents have not been viewed by a member of the public or have received very few views. However, we keep them on the website for public transparency and will provide alternative versions upon request. We believe that the cost of retrospectively fixing these documents would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the Accessibility Regulations 2018, ie, to fix all documents on www.southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk that have a publication date from 23 September 2018. Furthermore, we believe the benefit to the public in assigning staff or procuring external support to fix these documents would not be justifiable use of the public purse and users would instead benefit most from us focusing on fixing more recent most used documents and ensuring that new documents are accessible.
The PDFs relating to the development of the Village Clusters Housing Allocations Plan are partially compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA standards however we have taken all the steps we can towards compliance. This includes:
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- PDF and accessible documents training for staff, provided by AbilityNet
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- Using automated and manual checking tools to remediate issues, such as Adobe Acrobat DC and Microsoft Word Accessibility Checker
If requested, we can provide the PDFs in alternative formats.
Third party software and systems
Some online services we offer use software that is built and maintained by third party suppliers on our behalf. We have been working with suppliers to establish timescales and costs for compliance. The following outlines the current status of what has been done and what we believe would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations to fix at this time. We will make another assessment as supplier contracts come up for renewal. We are also reviewing systems as part of a corporate-wide programme of work to align IT systems across Broadland District Council and South Norfolk Council. The initial findings from the review are expected in June 2021 from which individual system timescales can then be developed:
Broadland District Council systems
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- Planning Explorer and Payment Portal: We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with interactive tools and transactions on these systems. We believe that retrospectively fixing these issues at this time would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. These systems are in the scope of our review on aligning IT systems across both councils
South Norfolk Council systems
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- Planning Portal and Local Land Charges: The third party suppliers do not currently have an accessible version of the software. These systems are in the scope of our review on aligning IT systems across both councils
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- Payment portal: We’ve fixed the issues with interactive tools and transactions on our Payment Portal, however we are aware the Visa and Mastercard verification service used when processing payments remains non-compliant. We are working with our current software provider to understand how this can be addressed
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- Council Tax: The supplier has confirmed their version is compliant but our checks have found otherwise, possibly due to customisation for our site. We are investigating this currently.
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- Leisure system: We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with interactive tools and transactions on our Leisure system. We believe that fixing these issues would at this time be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations
Both councils
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- Electronic forms (including our front-end forms to third party systems): We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with the electronic forms. We believe that fixing these issues would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We have instead invested all our time and resources into building a new forms solution to meet all our accessibility needs for the future. We are actively redeveloping our forms into the new platform focusing on those forms which are most frequently used by our customers
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
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 Joint Core Strategy (adopted 2011, amendments adopted 2014). However, we want to keep PDFs and other documents on the website for public transparency and will provide alternative versions upon request.
We are also not required by the regulations to fix documents provided by third-parties that are neither funded nor developed by, nor under the control of the Council. We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
We have worked with our website supplier to ensure that templates used by web content editors are accessible and responsive. We have trained web content editors on accessible content and have engaged Abilitynet to develop and provide practical training in accessible document production for all staff across the council.
We have set up processes so that this website is continually tested.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 27 May 2021. It was last updated on 28 March 2022.
This website was last tested on 15 November 2021. The test was carried out by our Siteimprove automated process producing reports and content editor guidance. We use Siteimprove manual testing for satellite sites related to this digital service.
We use this approach in deciding on sample of pages to test where they have been highlighted as having accessibility issues through the automated monitoring and reporting on content accessibility.
We test:
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- our main website platform, available at https://www.southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk and our leisure website at https://www.southnorfolkleisure.co.uk
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- our online forms systems at https://forms.southnorfolkandbroadland.gov.uk and https://secure.broadland.gov.uk (subdomain names provided for information only.
These are not linked to on this page because it would cause an error unless linked to a specific form).