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Accessibility statement for Lewes District and Eastbourne Borough Councils website

This website is run by Lewes District Council and Eastbourne Borough Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to do the following using BrowseAloud free software:

  • read the page out loud or read selected text 
  • get written and spoken translations in multiple languages
  • convert selected text into an MP3
  • block distractions on screen with a tinted mask
  • enlarge text and read it aloud
  • remove clutter and display only the main text
  • customise options to suit your individual needs or preferences

We have 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.

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • 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 not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • Live video streams of committee webcasts do not have captions

If you need information on this website in a different format like large print, easy read, audio recording or braille please fill in our contact us form.

You can get alternatives to non-accessible content by:

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, please fill in our report a website fault form. This will be sent to the Digital Services Team.

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 are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

The best way to contact us is online, using our contact us form. This also provides details of our quietest phone times.

Details of our office locations and how to find us.

Lewes District Council and Eastbourne Borough Council are committed to making their website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

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

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

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

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).

Within these document lists are PDF image links. The alt tag "application/pdf" is used for multiple different destinations. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (link purpose in context).

We have assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information. 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 up for renewal.

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. For example, we have PDF Council Tax booklets for 2019-20. By September 2020, 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 (webcasts of our council meetings) 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.

Our website is checked by SiteImprove for Level A, AA and AAA standards of the WCAG 2.1. We continue to monitor issues that arise using their live report for our website. We aim to fix them as soon as we are able to.

We also subscribe to Socitm Better Connected. They use Silktide to test local authority sites for accessibility according to The EU Directive on accessibility of public websites and mobile applications. Our results are published on the Socitm Better Connected website.

We have recently made sure that our links have a colour contrast of more than 3:1 to the surrounding text.

We continue to fix issues as they arise from the live SiteImprove report for our website.

This statement was prepared on 23 March 2020. It was last updated on 23 March 2020.