Accessibility statement for Westmorland and Furness Shadow Authority

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

This website is run by Westmorland and Furness Shadow Authority. 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 aren’t fully accessible:

Our council plan PDF is inaccessible. An accessible version is available on the page
Our tables don't include the scope attribute to associate header cells and data cells. This fails W3C success criterion 1.3.1, Information and relationships
mapping, litemap, is not accessible using keyboard only and there is no alternative access to the information provided

We will update the statement when issues are fixed or when we expect them to be fixed.

Feedback and contact information

If you need any information on this website in a different format, you can contact us:

Or Cumbria County Council contact.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.

Call or email us for directions if you cannot view the map on our offices contact details.

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, you can let us know by contacting your district council:

Or Cumbria County Council website.

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

Until vesting day on 01 April 2023 the Westmorland and Furness Shadow Authority does not deliver services and has no administrative team or offices.

Until then you should contact your district council:

Or Cumbria County Council.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Westmorland and Furness Shadow Authority 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

The website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Our council plan PDF is inaccessible. An accessible version is available on the page
our tables don't include the scope attribute to associate header cells and data cells. This fails W3C success criterion 1.3.1, Information and relationships
mapping, litemap, is not accessible using keyboard only and there is no alternative access to the information povided

We will update the statement when issues are fixed or when we expect them to be fixed.

Non-compliance with accessibility regulations

There are some known accessibility issues with our website identified in our most recent accessibility audit completed March 2022, site last tested March 2022:

our council plan PDF is inaccessible. An accessible version is available on the page
our tables don't include the scope attribute to associate header cells and data cells. This fails W3C success criterion 1.3.1, Information and relationships. We intend to fix this issue by the end of July 2022. This issue is fixed.
mapping, litemap, is not accessible using keyboard only and there is no alternative access to the information povided. Fails WCAG success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content: All non-text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose (Level A). We aim to provide essential information in an accessible form by the end of May 2022. We added relevant text content, about the wards in the authority's area, in May 2022.
tab focus is particualrly indistinct on some browsers. Fails WCAG success criterion 2.4.11: Focus appearance minimum (Level AA). This issue was fixed in April 2022
links are not clearly identifiable. A link in our cookie control is not underlined. Failure of WCAG 2.0 Success Criterion 1.4.1 due to creating links that are not visually evident without colour vision. This issue was fixed in April 2022
links are not clearly idenfiable. The static text is the same colour as the link text in our drop down navigation. Failure of WCAG 2.0 Success Criterion 1.4.1 due to creating links that are not visually evident without colour vision. This issue was fixed in April 2022
text is clipped when resized. Text in our cookie control drop down doesn't scale to 200% without loss of content or functionality information. Fails WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.4: Resize Text. This issue was fixed in April 2022

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

PDFs and other documents

The Public Sector Body Accessibility Regulations 2018 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 should meet accessibility standards.

Live video

Live video streams do not have captions. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions, live).

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 29 March 2022. It was last reviewed on 28 September 2022.

The test was carried out on behalf of the relevant Local Government Reform workstreams by Southlakeland District Council.

We use this approach to deciding on a sample of pages to test:

automated testing, Siteimprove accessibility checker crawls 100% of our web pages weekly
manual testing, we check a representative sample pages of from the busiest areas of our site and the home page

Shadow Authority for Westmorland and Furness Council