Accessibility

Accessibility Statement for New Forest National Park Authority

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

We are committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone, and applying the relevant accessibility standards.

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. New Forest National Park Authority is partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard.

You should be able to:

zoom in up to 300% without problems
navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
use most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver).

Feedback and contact information

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of our website. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers by:

Phone: 01590 646600
Email: communications@newforestnpa.gov.uk
Postal and office address: Lymington Town Hall, Avenue Road, Lymington, Hants SO41 9ZG.

Compatibility with browsers and assistive technology

This website is not compatible with:

Browsers older than 2 major version

Please visit AbilityNet for guidance on adapting your computer to your accessibility needs.

Technical specifications

Accessibility of New Forest National Park Authority relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

HTML
WAI-ARIA
CSS
JavaScript.

Limitations and alternatives

Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of our website, there may be some limitations. Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.

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.

Some information is presented as map data and is not accessible using a screen reader
Some of our content may be difficult to understand
Some pages have skipped heading levels
Some links and link titles are redundant
You can’t skip to the main content when using a screen reader. Date for completion: 06/08/21
White circle buttons cannot be selected using keyboard to change to another page of planning articles
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1 (keyboard) Date for completion: 06/08/21
At 200% zoom on the homepage, the video covers all menus
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.4 (resize Text) Date for completion: 06/08/21
The paging links for news articles do not have sufficient colour contrast for the active page
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 (Contrast) Date for completion: 23/07/21

Disproportionate burden

Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag or have other non compliant HTML markup.

Many of our forms are built and hosted through third party software and simply using default look and feel in order to look like our website, but we do not have direct control over all the markup produced.

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 supplier contract is up for renewal, likely to be in the next two years.

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. By September 2021, we plan to either fix these, replace them with accessible HTML pages, or remove them entirely where deemed no longer necessary.

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.

Visual Presentation

This site uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) so that you may customise the presentation to suit your preferences. The text size is relative, allowing you to adjust the size of the text in your browser.

Links

Please be aware that some links may open in a new window. We make every effort to ensure that we only link to reputable websites, however no liability is accepted for the content and information contained on linked websites, or reliance upon information contained on them.

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email communications@newforestnpa.gov.uk, or call us on 01590 646600.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact us by telephone on 01590 646600, or email enquiries@newforestnpa.gov.uk.

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).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

New Forest National Park Authority is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Assessment approach

We assessed the accessibility of website through internal self-evaluation and this statement was created partially using the W3C Accessibility Statement Generator Tool.

Accessibility of our other websites and online services

We use some third party online services and websites to allow customers to interact and transact with us. These include (but are not limited to) applying for planning permission. Not all these sites and online services meet the necessary standards for accessibility, and where they do not we are engaging with our suppliers to rectify this. When procuring new online systems, meeting accessibility standards is included in the specification, and we continue to work with suppliers to ensure sites continue to meet these standards.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 29 March 2018. It was last reviewed on 16 July 2021.

This website was last tested on 7 July 2021. The test was carried out by Zesty.

We tested pages which have caused issues in the past or pages which have been highlighted through automated scans by Silktide, a third-party service, as needing attention.

This website is provisionally scheduled to be tested again on 21 July 2021.