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Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to our main website www.southwark.gov.uk, our citizen account www.southwark.gov.uk/mysouthwark and our webforms.

This website is run by Southwark Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • 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
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text simple to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

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

  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • live video streams may not have captions
  • some of our online forms may be difficult to navigate using just a keyboard

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like large print, easy read, audio recording or braille please contact webmaster@southwark.gov.uk.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 10 working days.

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, you can report an accessibility issue.

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

Southwark 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 non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Images

Some images 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).

We plan to add text alternatives for all images by August 2021. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our interactive forms may be difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag. We aim to fix these by September 2021.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services. By May 2022, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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. For example, we do not plan to fix our audited statement of accounts for 2016-17 or any previous years.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards, but we’ll always aim to provide information in HTML wherever possible.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to all live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We have been working with our website supplier to build an accessibility checking tool to allow a more detailed assessment of the accessibility of our site.  Implementation of the tool is scheduled for August 2021.

We are currently implementing an accessibility checker application which reviews documents to ensure that they are WCAG 2.1 compliant.  Our aim is to have all historical documents accessible by March 2022.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 8 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 15 July 2021.

This website was last tested in August 2020. The test was carried out by Silktide.

You can read the full accessibility test report on the Silktide website.

Page last updated: 14 February 2023

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