Accessibility statement

The Broads Authority is committed to providing a web site that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of ability or technology and including those who have visual, hearing, motor and cognitive impairments.

At the Broads Authority we are actively working to increase the accessibility and usability of our web site and in doing so, aim to meet our legal obligations under the UK Equality Act.

Accessibility statement for the Broads Authority website

This accessibility statement applies to the Broads Authority website.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • see website content if you are visually impaired
  • skip page navigation and go to main content using a keyboard
  • zoom in 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. AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

Our website meets over 96.5% of of the WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard requirements and 77.1% of the WCAG 2.1 AAA standard, however there are some areas that are not fully accessible:

  • There are thousands of PDF files on our website and not all of these are fully accessible to screen readers. This may be a particular issue with older PDFs, maps or those generated by external agencies.
  • Live video streams, for example of committee meetings, do not have captions.

You can find more information about inaccessible areas of our site in the technical details section below.

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:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in seven days.

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, contact us by using our contact form or alternative email Tom.Waterfall@broads-authority.gov.uk in the Communications Team.

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).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Broads Authority 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 over 96.5% 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

The 'date' column of the tide table on our tide information webpage has an incorrect header attribute. Although this doesn't show as an error to non-visually impaired users, it may cause issues with some screen readers and fails WCAG A 1.3.1 success criterion 'Fix incorrect table headers attribute'. We are exploring how to fix this issue but do not have a current date or guarantee that it will be possible to do so.

Some PDF files on our website do not have titles defined or a language set, this fails WCAG success criterion A 2.4.2 and A 3.1.1 respectively. We will be working through the site to address as many of these as possible over the coming months from October 2020. There is more detail on this below.

Disproportionate burden

The 'Journey Through the Broads' animation does not meet accessible guidelines and relies on users clicking on buttons and other objects to progress through the information. We are not able to re-create this in an accessible format due to technical difficulties and the associated costs. The page is a low-priority and low-traffic supplement to the 'About the Broads' section of our website and the information presented is available in alternative formats, we therefore do not propose to amend the animation.

There are two accessibility issues with the layout of the 'Meet our members' page. The member photographs are organised as a modified list, which fails WCAG 4.1.1 success criterion 'Ensure lists are marked up correctly' as the audit software does not deem the members to be arranged as a list. Furthermore, the software reports that the page scrolls horizontally on small screens, failing WCAG AA 1.4.10 success criterion 'Ensure pages don't scroll in two dimensions on small screens'. We have asked a web developer to review the page and do not believe it is feasible to rectify these issues based on the current way that the page is constructed.

We have audio clips of historic figures that are from the Broads area which are hosted on our YouTube channel and linked to from our website. These recordings have been provided by the East Anglian Film Archive. Many of these recordings have poor-quality audio due to their age and the recording equipment used, meaning that providing transcripts for them would be very difficult and time consuming.

Our website has thousands of PDF documents that serve a number of purposes, from our Broads local plan to habitat maps. We endeavour to ensure that the majority of documents on our website are in an easily understandable and accessible format, however we are aware that many of them may fail WCAG A 1.1.1 success criteria 'Ensure PDFs are machine readable'.

From October 2020, we have been working through important and highly-visible PDFs on our website to ensure they comply with the regulations, however due to the complexity and associated costs with retroactively changing all of our PDFs, we will not be able to do this for all files on our site. If there is a particular file you require in an accessible format, please contact us using the details on this page and we will be happy to help where we can.

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

PDFs and other documents

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 committee papers uploaded before 2018. 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 (such as committee meetings) because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Externally generated documents

As we are a public authority that works with a number of partner organisations, we frequently host and link to documents generated outside of our organisation on our website. We cannot guarantee that these documents will meet a high level of accessibility, however we do try to ensure that any issues that our website users have with these documents are addressed by the relevant organisation.

Please get in touch with us if you have an issue with any external documents on our website.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 12 January 2021 and was last reviewed on 12 January 2021.

The website was last tested on 12 January 2021 by the Broads Authority using the Silktide Accessibility Monitor.

Other information

W3C Validation Service

This web site is built using code compliant with W3C standards for HTML, XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

W3C is the governing authority on web development standards and practices.

Visual Design

This site uses CSS for visual layout.

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Browser compatibility

The site displays correctly in current web browsers.

If you view our site on an older browser, you may find pages don't display as intended if the browser isn't standards-compliant. We recommend you upgrade your browser to the latest version of one of the following, to get the most from our site.

Useful Links

Get in touch

If you have any comments, suggestions or complaints regarding accessibility on this website please get in touch with us using our contact form or by emailing Tom.Waterfall@broads-authority.gov.uk and we will endeavour to address the issue as soon as we can.

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