Accessibility statement for City of Wolverhampton Council websites.
This accessibility statement applies to the City of Wolverhampton Council corporate website - www.wolverhampton.gov.uk and all satellite websites published on or after September 2018, namely:
| Adoption@Heart Armed Forces Wolverhampton Black Country Early Outcomes Black Country Transport Children in Care Digital Wolves Educational Psychology Fostering for Wolverhampton Health & Wellbeing Ignite Hub Invest Wolverhampton Love Your Community Mayor of Wolverhampton Orange Wolves Recycle Rovers Relight Festival Shopatipper Shop Wolverhampton Social Work Jobs Stop Hate |
Trade with Confidence |
The statement does not apply to City of Wolverhampton Council websites, apps, intranets and extranets published before September 2018.
This website is run by City of Wolverhampton council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
- change colours, contrast levels and fonts
- zoom in up to 300% 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
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.
How accessible this website is
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
- some of our websites do not meet the required colour contrast ratio of 4.5:1, as can be seen from our Accessibility Roadmap, addressing this is an immediate priority
- most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
- most older video files do not have captions
- with most web forms users cannot review their content before submission
- Re: WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value - Ensure interactive controls are not nested: We are aware that there is an issue in relation to the tabs in the footer of the website because the elements have focusable descendants. This is currently being assessed and addressed.
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: customer.services@wolverhampton.gov.uk
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:
Email: webmaster@wolverhampton.gov.uk
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
Users who are deaf or hard of hearing who need access to any council service should contact us before visiting so we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter. We can also arrange this as a virtual meeting. Under normal operating times, there is a weekly drop-in session supported by Zebra Access, and we also have a text phone 07500 125590. Full details can be found here.
Find out how to contact us here.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
City of Wolverhampton 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, due to the non-compliances listed below.
Non-accessible content
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
- some of our websites do not meet the required colour contrast ratio of 4.5:1, as can be seen from our Accessibility Roadmap, addressing this is an immediate priority
- most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
- most older video files do not have captions
- Re: WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value- Ensure interactive controls are not nested: We are aware that there is an issue in relation to the tabs in the footer of the website because the elements have focusable descendants. This is currently being assessed and addressed.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
PDFs and other documents
Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By June 2024, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.
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.
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.
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
Our accessibility roadmap shows how and when we plan to improve accessibility on this website:
Accessibility Roadmap
- Address colour contrast issues - by end of February 2022 (Completed)
- Address form issues - by March 2022 (Completed)
- Create accessible PDFs - October 2020 to June 2024 (Updated)
- Ensure accessible video files - October 2020 to June 2024 (Updated)
- Reduce number of PDFs - October 2020 - Ongoing
- Assess all third party software and applications ahead of contract renewal to ensure accessibility standards are met - Ongoing
- Annual accessibility audit - March 2024
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was originally prepared on March 13, 2019. It was last reviewed on May 30, 2023.
How we tested this website
This website was last tested in March 2021. The tests were carried out by accessibility specialists in the City of Wolverhampton Council web team. The team tested the most used customer journeys through the website and a sample of the different types of page. The testing followed the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines and considered the needs of users with sight impairment, physical disabilities, hearing impairment and cognitive disabilities. A further assessment of the site occurred in October 2021 courtesy of the Cabinet Office, this raised a number of significant issues which were addressed between November 2021 and January 2022.
The tools used are listed below.
Screen readers: ReciteMe and VoiceOver
Evaluation tools: WAVE, Accessibility Insights for Web and Accessibility Inspector
Other tools: Browser zoom tool
Additional information
Changing colours, font, text size and other settings
All modern browsers allow you to change colours and font sizes. Please refer to the BBC'S accessibility pages for advice on changing settings
Readability
We have made every effort to ensure this website is easily readable using 'plain English'.
In addition, we have ensured that the design of this website will not present an obstacle to usability and readability.
Signing
At present we do not offer any information on our site which is signed but should you need an interpreter to access council services you can request to use our interpreter service.
Accessing the website in different languages
The information on our website is in English. However, you will see a LISTEN icon at the top of every page on our website that will assist you in translating text into a different language.
Audio
At present content is also available in audio in the following languages:
- Arabic
- Basque
- Catalan
- Chinese Simplified
- Chinese Traditional
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Finnish
- French
- Galician
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Slovak
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Welsh
Browser Accessibility
We have aimed to make this site fully usable with any browser, including text-only and access technologies.
Cascading Style Sheets and Javascript are used, but only to enhance appearance and usability.
Please email webmaster@wolverhampton.gov.uk if you have any difficulties with a particular browser setup, and we will try to correct the problem.