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Accessibility

Accessibility policy

Calderdale Council is committed to ensuring web site accessibility for people with disabilities.

We follow web authoring standards set by the W3C to ensure our web pages are as compatible with as many browsers and browsing devices as possible.

The standards we follow are:

• WCAG Web Content Accessibility Guidelines| :
  These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities. Each guideline is assigned a priority level based on its impact on accessibility:
   
  • Priority 1

    "A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents."

  • Priority 2

    "A Web content developer should satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents."

  • Priority 3

    "A Web content developer may address this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying this checkpoint will improve access to Web documents."

• XHTML specifications| :
  This is a set of symbols and codes, known as markup, inserted in a file intended for display on a web page. The markup tells the web browser how to display a page's text and images for the user.

Our web page content is compliant with WCAG 1.0 Level Double-A (priority 1 and 2); however, sections of the site do not currently meet this level:

• Certain transactional pages supplied by 3rd parties are not compliant with all Level A and Double-A standards. We are working closely with 3rd party suppliers to ensure their pages meet Level Double-A standards. Current sections of the site that use 3rd party software are:
  • Online payments
  • Planning applications
  • Library catalogue
  • Bookings
  • Roadworks
  • Online maps
     
• Non-XHTML content such as PDF, Excel, Word, and Power Point documents are not compliant with Level A and Double-A standards. Where possible a summary of each document is provided in XHTML. We are working towards resolving this issue, but as the web site contains hundreds of these documents it will take considerable time to make these documents compliant or provide XHTML equivalents.

If you have any problems accessing content on the web site please contact the web team:
webteam@calderdale.gov.uk.
Please let us know which page is causing problems and if you have any suggestions for improving it.
We will then try to:

• Provide the information in a suitable format.
• Resolve the accessibility problem as soon as possible.

• WCAG 1.0 Level Triple-A (Priority 1, 2 and 3), the highest level of conformance that can be achieved.
• Transitional XHTML 1.0