This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
- The Lewes District Local Plan 2003 pages and maps have pop-ups and a few broken links as they were developed by third parties and are subject to copyright
- We include YouTube player and Twitter feeds that can cause accessibility issues
- Some of our older PDF documents are untagged, have no bookmarks or title as they were provided by third parties or are security protected
- Some PDFs have been created from Tiff images, so cannot be made fully accessible
- Some embedded third party Google maps do not use correct ARIA commands and elements. We have provided links for customers to access the maps direct through their device which may improve their experience using their personal device settings.
- Our pages do not have skip navigation on them as the top navigation content is small and the main content is reached quickly
Disproportionate burden
Navigation and accessing information
Our documents are within tables where HTML is used to format content in presentational attributes instead of css styling. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (information and relationships).
We have assessed the cost of fixing this issue. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the Content Management System (CMS) is due for renewal.
PDFs on our third party planning systems
Our third party planning systems produce inaccessible image PDFs - for example, delegated officer reports, which do not have tags, titles or language specified.
We have assessed that to fix this issue would require a complete overhaul of the systems requiring considerable work, resource and cost. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations.
Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
PDFs and other documents
Some of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they are accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).
Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. We plan to fix these by adding tags and specifying their language.
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
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.