Accessibility Statement

This website http://www.neashamparishcouncil.co.uk/ is run by Neasham Parish Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website, regardless of age or impaired abilities. We aim to enable you, for example, to:

  • 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.
  • increase the font size and zoom in on content.
  • navigate a page using headings throughout our written content.

We also use plain English principles to make our content clear and easy 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 fully accessible at present. For example:

  • a few PDF documents may not be fully accessible to assistive technology.
  • illustrations may not have fully informative alt-text.
  • one of our reports includes manuscript.
  • a few of our pages may be hard to navigate with just a keyboard.
  • some of our information is in tables which may not be accessible.
  • our contact form may not work fully with some assistive technologies.

Please use the contact details below to tell us if you have an access problem. We will try to provide you with a suitable alternative.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We want to continue 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, contact:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within a couple of weeks.

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

Neasham Parish Council is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (‘the Regulations’).

Compliance status

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

Non-accessible content

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

  • PDFs of documents supplied by third parties for manuscript completion
  • documents prepared in tables may not be accessible

Non-compliance with the Regulations

  • It is not possible to make some of the documents in the “Finance and Administration” section of our web-site accessible for the reasons given above
  • Skip links, used to bypass navigation bars that appear on multiple pages, are not recognised by some web-browsers.
  • The Contact Form may not be usable by some technologies.

Content that’s not within the scope of the Regulations.

The accessibility regulations do not apply to:

  • documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. Please tell us if you require access to a specific document, and we will try to provide a bespoke alternative.
  • the ‘CAPTCHA’ components of our contact page, which are provided by third parties.

Disproportionate burden

We believe it is a “disproportionate burden” to convert meeting minutes and agendas into HTML as regards meetings prior to 31 March 2021. We have never had a request for copy minutes during the five years’ life of our former web-site.

The small quantity of records held in tables or generated through Excel requires bespoke treatment. We have no record of having been asked for copies in any format, and the conversion cost is disproportionate.

As any 'skip links' issues only apply to certain web browser(s). Issues would be difficult and costly to fix and may well create 'knock-on' accessibility issues. We consider that the burden of trying to do so would be disproportionate and where appropriate will refer affected users to other browsers.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We have worked extensively between the Autumn of 2020 and the Spring of 2022 to update and convert our policies, meetings information and other information documents to HTML format to facilitate accessibility. Although we have reviewed and updated procedural documents intended for internal use, these are not published on our web-site. If there is a requirement for provision of a procedural document in accessible format we will endeavour to meet that requirement on a bespoke basis.

Alt-txt will be provided where the need for this is identified. This will include return forms which we have to complete manually.

A process for auditing our performance of this plan has been added to our annual review process.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement has been prepared as part of our 2022 governance review. It will be reviewed after 31 March each year as part of that annual review process.

This website was last tested on 18 January 2021. We did our own testing on PDF documents. We selected sample PDF documents for testing by reference to their age and authorship, and using accessibility checkers in both Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. Testing of the other parts of the website was carried out on 29 November 2020 by Adam Crute of AC Sound and Media using 'Accessibility Insights for Web' analysis tool.

A further test will be carried out in May 2022, following the recent completion of planned upgrades to our web-site. This statement will be updated accordingly. Thereafter testing will be carried out at least annually in conjunction with our annual governance review.

This Statement was approved by Neasham Parish Council on 5 April 2022

Addendum approved 4 July 2023: Following our 2023 Annual Governance Review and receipt of an external Site Accessibility Report, an updated Disproportionate Burden Assessment has been made (copy available on request) and it has been resolved that no alteration is presently required to this Accessibility Statement.

Ref: 2022/04