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Accessibility

Accessibility Statement for North East Derbyshire District Council

This accessibility statement applies to www.ne-derbyshire.gov.uk and https://myselfservice.ne-derbyshire.gov.uk and was last updated 27 May 2021.

This website is run by North East Derbyshire District 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 (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:

  • most older PDF and Word documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • some of our Self Service forms are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • our online web chat is not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • our online mapping tool is difficult to navigate using just a keyboard, is not fully accessible to screen reader software, and cannot be used effectively on small-screen devices
  • live video streams do not have captions

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: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • Telephone: 01246 231111
  • Text phone: 07800002425

Your request will be acknowledged within 3 working days. The Council aims to provide an accessible format upon request within 15 working days.

If you cannot view the map 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, contact us via email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., via telephone: 01246 231111 or via text phone: 07800002425.

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

We provide a text number service for people who are deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment. The text service number is 07800002425.

Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

North East Derbyshire District 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

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Most of our older PDF and Word documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software; we aim to ensure that all documents produced by us from 1st September 2020 will be accessible and are working on converting any documents back to September 2018, or beyond, where possible.

Documents provided to us by third parties, such as, Planning Inspector, consultation responses, letters etc. will not all be accessible. We have put measures in place to request that third parties provide data in an accessible format and will be converting any that are not provided in an accessible format, where possible, from September 2020 onwards.

All documents accessed through the Local Plan Examination pages remain as originally submitted (including NEDDC’s documents) pending further advice from the Planning Inspectorate who are looking into the legal issues. We are actively working on making them accessible in the meantime and aim to have these accessible in the coming months unless the Planning Inspectorate’s legal advice states otherwise.

External Providers

Some parts of our website link to or use content provided by other websites and these are not always accessible as our site. Examples include:

Our online forms and web-mapping are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website.

The majority of our Self Service pages are accessible however some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard or screen reader because information about them is not conveyed fully, or may be ambiguous;

  • Some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content), 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships), 3.3.2 (Labels or Instructions), and 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value).
  • Multi-step form fields use the same ID more than once which may miscommunicate information about that field. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.1 (Parsing)

We have raised these accessibility issues with the providers of our forms software and asked that they work with us to achieve compliance as soon as possible. This statement will be updated with a timeframe when it is known.

Our website links to online web chat that is built and hosted by an external provider. This web chat is not fully accessible to screen reader software. As this tool is not essential to providing our services, we will consider an accessible alternative once our current contract expires, and provide an update here in due course.

Our online mapping tool is difficult to navigate using just a keyboard, is not fully accessible to screen reader software, and cannot be used effectively on small-screen devices.

Interactive tools and transactions

We are assessing the cost of fixing the issues with interactive tools and transactions.

Disproportionate burden

We do not intend to claim a disproportionate burden to the work required to make the website fully compliant.

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 September 2020, 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. For example, we do not plan to fix historic delegated decision information or past election declaration of results.

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

We continuously improve our website’s accessibility based on user and automated testing.

We provide content preparation guidelines to our web content authors that focus on improving accessibility for online users, and we promote the importance of accessibility using our internal communication channels.

We are speaking to our third-party suppliers about improving the accessibility of their products.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 3 January 2020. It was last reviewed on 11 November 2021.

This website was last tested November 2021. The test was carried out by Silktide Index in partnership with SOCITM.

We conducted further manual/internal tests using a combination of the tools listed below, on a random sample of pages, during development of the site. Ad-hoc tests are conducted periodically on an ongoing basis.

  • Silktide Disability Simulator (Chrome extension)
  • axe DevTools (Chrome extension)
  • Accessibility Insights for Web (Chrome extension)
  • Sa11y (Chrome bookmarklet)
  • WebAIM WAVE (online tool)
  • NVDA (manual testing)
  • WCAG (manual testing)