Accessibility statement

Home / Help / Web help / Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to www.hull.gov.uk .

This website is run by Hull City Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website.  AbilityNet has advice on how you can do this and on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

For example, that means you will be able to -

  • 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)
  • change colours
  • change contrast levels
  • change fonts and font sizes

Access AbilityNet website here 

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 including - 

  • most PDF documents are not fully accessible
  • certain parts of our forms need improving. We will work with the third party supplier to address this on third party sites and we are working to improve the Hull site
  • some tables cause horizontal scrolling and make content illegible
  • we’re also aware that some third party websites or systems that this website links to, or integrates with, are not accessible and may have issues. Where possible we are working with these suppliers to address these, and other accessibility issues. Please read more about addressing issues with third party suppliers and ‘disproportionate burden’.
  • live video streams do not have captions
  • some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • there’s a limit to how far you can magnify the maps on our location pages
  • our web styling needs improvements around contrast and distinguishing links and button form other content 

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format such as -

  • accessible PDF
  • large print
  • easy read
  • audio recording
  • braille 

please use email address info@hullcc.gov.uk or telephone us on 01482 300 300

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within five working days dependent on the urgency of your request.

If you cannot access the map on our ‘contact us’ page, call us 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 –

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 you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Visit the Equality Advisory and Support Service website

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

We are committed to making our 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

Some PDF documents are not fully accessible as they are not machine-readable. We are working towards amending the existing PDFs (post 2018) and ensuring processes are in place to ensure newly published PDFs meet accessibility standards. Currently, some existing PDFs fail to meet the following criteria -

  • WCAG A 1.1.1 - All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose
  • WCAG A 1.3.1 - Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text
  • WCAG A 2.4.2 - Web pages have titles that describe topic or purpose
  • WCAG A 3.1.1 - The default human language of each web page can be programmatically determined
     

Forms

Some of our forms need improving. We will work with the third party supplier to address this on third party sites, and we are working to improve the Hull site in relation to these criteria –

  • WCAG A 1.3.1 - Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text
  • WCAG A 2.1.1 - All functionality of the content is operable through a keyboard interface
  • WCAG AA 1.3.5 - The purpose of each input field collecting information about the user can be programmatically determined

Tables

We are working through our website to rectify issues with some content presented in table format, to remove horizontal scroll and to improve usage and legibility on mobile devices.

  • WCAG A 1.3.1 – Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text
  • WCAG AA 1.4.10 – Content can be presented without loss of information or functionality, and without requiring scrolling in two dimensions

iFrames/embedded third party content

We’re also aware that some third party websites or systems that this website links to, or integrates with (such as Google Maps), are not accessible and may have issues, such as –

  • WCAG A 1.1.1 - All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose
  • WCAG A 2.4.1 - A mechanism is available to bypass blocks of content that are repeated on multiple Web pages
  • WCAG 4.1.2 – For all user interface components (including but not limited to: form elements, links and components generated by scripts), the name and role can be programmatically determined
  • WCAG AA 1.4.3 – The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1

Contrast and element identification

To ensure different content elements can be easily distinguished from each other, and functions more easily determined, we are making improvements to our web styling to improve colour contrast and to make links/buttons more distinguishable from other content. We are also improving keyboard navigation. This is to comply with the following criteria -

  • WCAG A 1.1.1 - All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose
  • WCAG A 1.4.1 - Colour is not used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element
  • WCAG AA 1.4.3 - The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1
  • WCAG AA 2.4.7 - Any keyboard operable user interface has a mode of operation where the keyboard focus indicator is visible

Third party sites

We use third party providers to provide some additional functions and tasks for our web users, such as forms, online payments, mapping etc. We are working with these suppliers to address any accessibility issues with their products, to ensure we provide a robust and accessible solution for you across all of our online services.

Some of the issues we are aware of include -

  • no ‘skip to main content’ option)
  • it is not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content
  • it is not always possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping
  • there is insufficient contrast between text and background colours
  • some forms are not labelled correctly
  • the content cannot be listened to using a screen reader
  • text on images where no alt text is provided

Please read more about addressing issues with third party suppliers and ‘disproportionate burden’.

Disproportionate burden

Interactive tools and transactions

Our website contains ‘third party content’. These are systems that we link to, or are embedded into our site, including –

  • housing portal
  • planning portal ‘Public Access’ or the parking fine payment system.
  • payments portal
  • customer account
  • schools portal
  • revenues and benefits portal

We do not have control over, and are not responsible for the accessibility of this content but we endeavour to continue working with the third party to improve its accessibility.

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the accessibility issues with such sites and we believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations.

We will make further assessments when the supplier contracts are up for renewal.

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. 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.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2020. This website was last tested on 18 September 2020. The test was carried out by us using the Silktide system. All of the pages for this site were tested.

Related content