Accessibility statement for Idox Public Access (planning portal)

Our online planning portal service is supplied by Idox plc.

Idox Public Access follows the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 (AA) standard and employs the following accessible best practices:

• clear page titles for better orientation
• alternative text description for images (“alt text”) and other non-text elements
• consistent and clear use of headings including a semantic hierarchy (where possible)
• association of form controls with corresponding labels
• logical order for forms that can be navigated using a keyboard (for example, using the ‘Tab’ key to move between fields)
• clear form error messages in proximity to corresponding erroneous form fields
• association of all data cells in a data table with their headers
• meaningful text for hyperlinks (and a title attribute, where applicable)
• sufficient foreground and background colour contrast combinations for clear readability
• keyboard navigation, including for menus and calendar controls

• Non-unique HTML IDs:
  There are instances of non-unique HTML IDs, which is invalid mark-up, which affects how screen readers parse and announce the page content. This fails WCAG success criterion 4.1.1 - Parsing

• Headings:
  Some page headings are not in a logical hierarchy order, which can affect how content is announced by screen reader technology and keyboard-only navigation. This fails WCAG success criterion 2.4.6 – Headings and Labels

• Document icons alt text:
  On the Documents table, the action icons all have the same alternative text/titles, which means screen-reader users will not be able to distinguish between individual items. This fails WCAG success criterion 1.3.1 Info and Relationships

• reCAPTCHA:
  Our third-party reCAPTCHA widget does not use sufficient colour contrast for some elements and may be difficult to use with the keyboard. This fails WCAG success criteria 1.4.3 – Contrast (Minimum) and 2.1.1 – Keyboard

• Map component:
  Our third-party map component uses some tables for layout; its controls do not always receive focus and are not accessible by keyboard navigation. Some functions (for example, measuring distance and area) require a mouse or touch interface to achieve. This fails WCAG success criteria 1.3.1 – Info and Relationships, 2.1.1 – Keyboard and 2.5.7– Dragging Movements

• Reflow:
  The desktop version of pages will not reflow without content scrolling both vertically and horizontally. This will make it more difficult for some users to use the content when zoomed into a page at higher values (for example, 200%). This fails WCAG success criteria 1.4.10 – Reflow

• Online measuring tool (OMT):
  The integrated online measuring tool (OMT v5.0) has various issues (which will need to be addressed independently of Public Access) - these include missing form labels, heading levels and alternative text for images/icons; empty elements (i.e. with no text content); and low colour contrast. These fail WCAG success criteria 3.3.2 - Labels or Instructions, 2.4.4 - Link Purpose (In Context), 1.4.3 – Contrast (Minimum)