Accessibility Statement

Accessibility statement for St Albans City & District Council

This website is run by St Albans City & District Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. To ensure this, we have put in place certain things which mean it is as accessible as we can make it for everyone.

Some of the things we have done to make things easier for users are as follows:

you can;

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
and we’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand

If you have a disability and would like to make your device easier to use, AbilityNet has some great advice and free resources for you.

Our website accessibility

We are trying our best to get everything as accessible as possible, but we know some parts of this website are not yet not fully accessible, these are the things which we are still working on:

most older PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software
live video streams don’t have captions
you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF or large print, please use one of the contact methods below.

If you do not have a free MyStAlbans District Account,

It's simple to sign up for one, just click on the Sign up for a MySt Albans Account button below and follow the step by step instructions to create your account.

Sign up for a MyStAlbans Account

We’ll acknowledge your request within 2 working days, and we will tell you how long it will take to complete.

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

St Albans City & District Council are committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

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 Regulations

Images – text alternative

Some images do not have a text alternative, so the information in them is not available to people using a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). We plan to add text alternatives for all images by 2021 . When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role, value)

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. (for example, we have forms saved as PDFs.) By 2025, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages or online forms.

The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before
23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

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

3rd party content
Our site includes 3rd party content and documents.
We cannot guarantee that all 3rd party content is accessible.
We are not responsible for any 3rd party content.

Using 3rd party content or functionality

We often link to 3rd party websites or documents when there is useful information that relates to our services.

For example, we link to 3rd party websites such as official information sources like www.gov.uk or www.electoralcommission.org.uk

We also often create content on 3rd party platforms. (For example, we create video content on YouTube.) We're responsible for making sure the content is accessible but we're not responsible for YouTube's platform.

Testing the website

We have fully audited our site to identify issues and create a plan of action to fix these issues.

The testing was carried out by ourselves manually and using the Monsido quality, accessibility, and marketing platform to perform an automated report on the website’s accessibility.

Independent testing: Our main website www.stalbans.gov.uk is independently tested monthly by SOCITM. The results of this testing can be found below;

Independent testing

Improvements and reporting accessibility problems with this website

You can change the colour contrast, line height and font size of our website using our online tool.

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that are not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact us.

If you do not have a free MyStAlbans District Account,

It's simple to sign up for one, just click on the Sign up for a MySt Albans Account button below and follow the step by step instructions to create your account.

Sign up for a MyStAlbans Account

We’ll acknowledge your request within 2 working days, and we will tell you how long it will take to complete.

This statement was updated on 08th September 2022.