Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to South Lanarkshire Council's website.

This website is run by South Lanarkshire 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 as clear as possible to understand.

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

To provide the best possible experience a mobile phone some elements are removed when you view the site on a phone to improve the usability and user experience.

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible.

most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
the homepage slider does not resize correctly at 125% and above, making it challenging for the user
older videos don't have captions

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille you should email equalities@southlanarkshire.gov.uk

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 days.

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 the requirements of the accessibility regulations, email webfeedback@southlanarkshire.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

South Lanarkshire 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.

PDFs

Pdfs uploaded after September 2020 are fully accessible. Pdfs uploaded between September 2018 and September 2020 are not fully accessible. We have identified 19 documents that are for an audience who may have disabilities. We will prioritise fixing these and hope to have them accessible by September 2021.

It would be a disproportionate burden to fix the others uploaded in that period and so we will replace these with accessible versions or delete them as they need updated. There will be a rolling programme which we aim to have completed by September 2022.

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 Routes Around Morgan Glen.

Any new PDFs we publish will meet accessibility standards.

The homepage slider

At the moment the homepage slider does not resize correctly at 125% and above, making it challenging if you need to enlarge the size of the website on your screen. The arrows to move the slider disappear. For this to be fixed, the code of the website would have to be changed and at the moment this can't be done due to a major web project which needs the website's code to remain unchanged until it is complete. This is expected to be finished in the autumn this year and we will fix this issue then.

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

Live video

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

External web services

Some or our web services are run by external companies and they are responsible for their own accessibility. These are:

Air quality storymap - ESRI accessibility statement
Benefits calculator – EntitledTo accessibility statement
Building Standards applications - this platform is not compliant with the new accessibility legislation but we will ask Idox to address this
Councillors and Committees - This platform does not publish its own accessibility statement but the team has provided the following: "The CMIS development team maintains a constant review of the current accessibility guidelines and requirements. This review is also done in partnership with our customers (for example, councils) as part of our ongoing and regular user groups. The CMIS development team ensure all public pages are compliant with the current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (2.0) and where there are areas within the product that need updating we seek to remedy these issues as quickly as possible and also in conjunction with user groups and customers"
Development plans - the pdfs for this section of the website are created by a third party supplier and are not compliant with accessibility legislation. Objective are aware of this and are working on a solution. This section also contains detailed maps which, by their nature cannot be read by a screen reader.
HomeOptions self-assessment - this platform is not compliant with the new accessibility legislation but we will ask Civica to address this
Jobs portal – accessibility statement
Licence applications - this platform is not compliant with the new accessibility legislation but we will ask Northgate to address this
Maps - ESRI accessibility statement
ParentPay – this site has no accessibility statement but we will ask ParentPay to address this
Payments - Civica accessibility statement
Planning applications - this platform is not compliant with the new accessibility legislation but we will ask Idox to address this
Public Assets storymap – ESRI accessibility statement
Report a lighting fault - ESRI accessibility statement
Report a road fault - ESRI accessibility statement
South Lanarkshire Funding Search - SCVO accessibility statement
Trading Standards National Advice Portal – these pages are pulled from a national portal on to our site and we have no control over either the content or the way it is provided. We know there are accessibility issues such as italics but we will ask the Trading Standards Institute to fix these.
Active Travel Network - these pdfs are not compliant with the new accessibility legislation but we will ask the supplier to address this

How we tested this website

This website is tested weekly using SiteImprove with the last full crawl completed on 15 September 2020. These results were also verified using a subsection crawl via SilkTide. SiteImprove have just released the NextGen release of their application to comply with the 2.1 version of the standard and we are working within the limitations/functionality of the product.

For this testing we did not sample pages, we performed a full site crawl to establish a more accurate understanding of the accessibility rating.

We tested our main council website and the following microsites:

We can send you a copy of the latest report if you email webfeedback@southlanarkshire.gov.uk

Recite Me web accessibility and language toolbar

We have added the Recite Me web accessibility and language toolbar to our website to make it accessible and inclusive for as many people as possible.

It helps one in five people in the UK who have a disability, including those with common conditions like sight loss and dyslexia, to access our website in the way that suits them best.

It also meets the needs of one in ten people in the UK who don’t speak English as their first language, by being able to translate our web content into over 100 different languages.

How do I access the Recite Me toolbar?

You can open the Recite Me language and accessibility toolbar by clicking on the ‘Recite Me' link at the top left of your screen (on both desktop and mobile view), which now appears on every page of our website.

The Recite Me toolbar opens and displays a range of different options for customising how the website looks and how you can access the content.

How does Recite Me help me access this website?

Recite Me helps people to access our website to do the things they need to do, like find information about how to access our services, for example, apply for benefits or book a special uplift or make payments.

The Recite Me toolbar has a unique range of functions. You can use it to:

Have the text on our website read aloud (including most downloads)
Download the text as an MP3 file to play it where and when it suits you
Change font sizes and colours
Customise background colour
Translate text into more than 100 different languages
Access a fully integrated dictionary and thesaurus

If you are using Recite Me for the first time, you can find out more about how it works from the Recite Me user guide.

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2020 and last updated on 17 April 2023.