Plumpton Parish Council

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Accessibility Evaluation Report

1. Executive Summary

This report describes the conformance of the Plumpton Parish Council website with W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The review process is described in Section 5 below.

Based on this evaluation, the Plumpton Parish Council website is close to meeting WCAG 2.1, Conformance Level AA. Detailed review results are available in Section 6 below. Feedback on this evaluation is welcome.

2. Background about Evaluation

Conformance evaluation of web accessibility requires a combination of semi-automated evaluation tools and manual evaluation by a reviewer. The evaluation results in this report are based on evaluation conducted in May-June 2020. The website may have changed since that time.

3. Scope of Review

Plumpton Parish Council Website: The purpose of the website is to disseminate mainly council related information to people in the Parish of Plumpton.

URL: plumptonpc.co.uk

URLs included in review: A representative subsection of pages was selected for review. The pages were chosen to represent the different types of content on the site.  All reviewed pages were evaluated both manually and by using semi automated evaluation tools.

The review was conducted in May- June 2020. 

4. Reviewer

Name of reviewer: Louise Sheeran, Treaty Services Ltd. Email: louise.sheeran@plumpton.pc.uk

Louise has extensive experience with website usability and website development. She is competent using web technologies, validation tools for web technologies, web content accessibility guidelines and techniques, approaches for evaluating web accessibility and use of a variety of evaluation tools for web site accessibility

5. Review Process

Plumpton Parish Website was tested for conformance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

Initial evaluation and validations tools used:

Initial manual review used

Then, after problems identified in the preliminary reviews had been addressed, a final manual review was done using:

using the evaluation tool:

6. Results and Recommended Actions

This website is close to meeting WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines.

Accessibility features in which this site is strong include:

  • correct use of headings
  • link text (apart from in minutes and agendas) is descriptive and distinguishable by both colour and font-weight
  • tab order is logical
  • the site can be used with keyboard and screen reader
  • it is scalable
  • table headings are tagged
  • can be used without stylesheets

Less accessible features include

  • some further information and all agendas and minutes are provided as non accessible pdf files.
  • some information, e.g. facilities hire rates and meeting agendas and minutes are presented in tables.
  • Agendas and minutes have not got descriptive link titles.
  • Pdf documents are not accessible.
  • Village Hall Application to Hire form – some forms fields are not obvious.
  • ARIA Landmarks are not used to full effect. 
  • The search form is not tagged correctly.

Plan for how to address less accessible features:

  • Going forward, further information will be provided as webpages instead of pdf documents whenever possible.
  • From 20 September, pdf files will be accessible. 
  • All tables will have correct headings so that screen readers can interpret them appropriately. If a user of Plumpton Parish Council website is using a screen reader to access the site and is still struggling to access the information in the tables, we can provide the information in an alternative format.
  • The Village Hall Application to Hire form will be redesigned by 20 September.
  • We will investigate if ARIA Landmarks can be accessed by us in the current theme by 20 September. If not, it will be a consideration when the site is next redeveloped. 
  • The search form is part of the theme so cannot be customised. We will raise this with the developers of the theme and address the issue if and when it becomes possible.
  • We will ensure that the theme is kept updated so that any improvements to accessibility will filter through to the site as soon as they are made available. 

On-going monitoring

  • The site will be checked on an annual basis to ensure that it maintains a high accessibility standard.

7. Appendices