Making our services accessible

Our accessibility statement applies to content published on www.lichfielddc.gov.uk (and subdomains, including democracy and planning) and our sister sites. We want as many people as possible to be able to use our websites - this means you should 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
• use most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

Keeping our website accessible

We are continuously scanning our website for accessibility issues and fixing issues when we are able. We use a service called Siteimprove that scans our website for any accessibility issues.

Our regular testing includes:

• Our main website platform, available at www.lichfielddc.gov.uk
• The following sub sites which are services based on a different technical platform but ‘skinned’ to look like our website.
  • Planning applications available at planning.lichfielddc.gov.uk/online-applications
  • Council meetings, agendas and minutes available at democracy.lichfielddc.gov.uk/
  • Electronic payments available at https://ip.e-paycapita.com/AIP/itemSelectionPage.do?link=showItemSelectionPage&siteId=333&languageCode=EN&source=AIP
• www.activelichfielddistrict.co.uk 
• www.beaconawards.co.uk
• www.ldcdevelopments.co.uk
• www.visitlichfield.co.uk
• Lichfield Proms in Beacon Park
• Lichfield Historic Parks
• Together We

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

We are committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. Our websites are partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

• some pages and document attachments are not clearly written.
• some heading elements are not consistent.
• some images do not have good alternative text.
• some of our PDF files that have been published since September 2018 are not accessible. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (info and relationships) and WCAG 1.1.1 (non-text content). We are working on making these accessible as soon as possible.
• 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. However, we do still plan to fix these over time. Any new PDFs or word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
• some PDFs hosted on our website are owned by third parties and some do not meet accessibility standards. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix content that is owned by third parties. 
• our sub-domain sites for planning applications, payments and council meetings have various accessibility issues. We are working with the suppliers of each of these systems to make these accessible as soon as possible.
• some embedded maps have been flagged as images that do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). Unfortunately, while we have investigated possible fixes, as this is a third party product we have no control over this.

Give us your feedback

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. We also follow AbilityNet's guidance.

If you are unhappy with the accessibility of our websites, please contact us so we can work to put it right and we will do all we can to make improvements.

If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) and we will work with them to put fixes in place.

This statement was first prepared in September 2020. It was last updated in June 2023.