Accessibility statement for Melksham Town Council

This accessibility statement applies to the Melksham Town Council website.

Melksham Town Council is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability. We are actively working to increase the accessibility and usability of our website and in doing so adhere to many of the available standards and guidelines. We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

W3C standards
This site has been built using code compliant with W3C standards for HTML and CSS. The site displays correctly in current browsers and using standards compliant HTML/CSS code means any future browsers should also display it correctly.

Accessibility targets
All web pages will be assessed by the guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Melksham Town Council requires that:
1.    All new web pages should be written to at least AA standard;
2.    All existing pages should meet at least A standard;
3.    Pages will be brought up to AA standard as they are periodically revised;
4.    Any third party who is engaged to design and build web pages for the council, whether hosted within or without the *Melksham Town Council domain, will be required to comply with these guidelines. Sites will be checked periodically;
5.    New content will be either written or edited by a trained editor to ensure it is written as clearly as possible. Legacy content will be re-edited where necessary as it is revised.

How accessible this website is
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
-Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software;
-Some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard.

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, please contact us by email: townhall@melksham-tc.gov.uk or telephone 01225 704187

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person
We provide a text relay service for people who are deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment. Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Melksham Town Council 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
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the exemptions listed below.

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

‍Interactive tools and transactions
‍Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.
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‍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.

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.

Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 15.05.2020. It was last reviewed on 30.12.2020

How to change the appearance of this website
Where possible, we have created this site so that your own preferences for colours, fonts and text sizes will take precedence over ours. The following resources will help you modify your own browser and operating system preferences to suit your own needs:
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‍Advice from the BBC showing users how to make full use of accessibility settings in browsers and operating systems.
‍Advice for Microsoft users

Advice for Apple users

‍Advice for Linux users

‍Advice on assistive technology
For more information on assistive technology (screen enlargers, screen readers, speech recognition systems, speech synthesizers, refreshable Braille displays, Braille embossers, talking word processors, large-print) for the visually impaired please visit the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) website.The British Dyslexia Association website has information about accessibility issues people with Dyslexia may encounter.

Contact us
We welcome any comments about our website, or on any of the details on this page. Please feel free to contact us on 01225 704187 or email townhall@melksham-tc.gov.uk