Website Accessibility

• Accessibility statement
• How do people with disabilities use the internet
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – validation service
• Web Accessibility Initiative – Double A conformance
• Accessible videos
• Exceptions
• RNIB approved - expired May 2019

Accessibility statement

A website for all people, a website for Haringey

• Over two million people in the UK are living with sight loss that has a significant impact on their daily lives.
• There are an estimated 4,930 people living with sight loss in Haringey

Our site is for all people. It has been designed with our target users in mind and Haringey people have been consulted at every stage of the design process. We have created a website that is designed to be accessible for the widest possible audience – regardless of ability

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How do people with disabilities use the internet

People with disabilities, such as a visual impairment, may use assistive technologies to use the internet. Assistive technologies are products used by people with disabilities to help accomplish tasks that they cannot do easily otherwise.

Assistive technology comes in many different forms, some of these include:

• Speech synthesis (speech output)
• Alternative keyboards or switches
• Braille and refreshable Braille
• Screen magnifiers
• Sound notification
• Screen readers
• Speech recognition
• Text browsers
• Voice browsers

The Haringey website has been built so that people using the technologies listed above can access and use the information available.

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W3C – validation service

This site is built using code compliant with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets. W3C is the governing authority on web development standards and practices. The site displays correctly with current browsers, and using standard XHTML code means that any future browsers will also display this website correctly.

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Web Accessibility Initiative – Double A conformance

This website seeks to conforms to the Double-A level of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 as a minimum, whilst aiming for Triple-A conformance. The Accessibility Guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities. Conformance to these Guidelines helps to make the Web more accessible to users with disabilities and benefits all users.

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Accessible videos

We now display a number of videos on our website. These are hosted on our council YouTube account (external link) and embedded on our pages using the You Tube media player.

Where they are available we have added in captions and a transcript to help deaf and visually impaired site visitors, however not all videos we display have commissioned captioning or transcripts. We are now advising all new and future video development carried out by Haringey Council include appropriate captions, transcripts and/or subtitles as part of the commissioning process.

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Exceptions

Last updated May 2019.

We are aware that some of our pages, forms and applications do not fully conform to all the WCAG 2.1 guidelines. Known issues include:

• PDFs and other linked documents - not all PDFs are created in an accessible way with clear structure, headings and links. We are working with web publishers to ensure new documents are created in an accessible way.
• E-forms - there are a number of issues related to some of our older e-forms such as incorrect page titles, tables used for layout, headings not marked up properly, no customisation of session time and no indication of current position within the form. These are limitations of the version of the e-form software we used to create these forms. We are in the process of reviewing and replacing these forms (starting with the most commonly used forms).
• Videos without subtitles, captions and audio descriptions - some of the videos we have been asked to broadcast on our site were produced without any subtitles, captions or transcripts. We have reissued guidelines for services producing video content to ensure these are included in all relevant future Haringey commissioned videos, and if not that a text equivalent is available for any information contained in the videos.
• Socitm Insight popup survey - the popup survey is not currently accessible for people using screen readers and keyboard users. We have relayed this information to Socitm who are reviewing the survey tool they are using.
• Third party websites - some websites which carry the Haringey logo are not directly managed by Haringey Council but by a third party supplier. Such sites include My Account, our online payments system and the library catalogue. These sites will have a different structure and layout to the main council website and may not always meet the same standards of accessibility as the main site. In our contracts with these suppliers we do require that all such sites meet a minimum level of accessibility under WCAG 2.1, so if you are aware of issues we can raise these with the suppliers of those websites / systems and ask them to make changes to improve accessibility accordingly.
• External links - all non-Haringey Council owned sites we link people to from this website are clearly marked as external links and outside our control. We can make no claims to the level of accessibility of those websites.

Whilst every effort is made to ensure the whole site conforms, with so many pages and contributors, this is an ongoing process. If you have any problem accessing any information on the site, please email us at content@haringey.gov.uk and we will endeavour to make changes or provide the information in a suitable format.

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RNIB approved - certificate expired May 2019

Please note our current RNIB accreditation expired in May 2019 and we are currently looking into procuring a new accessibility checking service. See below for more details on the RNIB award.

About the RNIB award

Haringey was the first local authority in the UK to have been awarded the Royal National Institute of Blind People’s (RNIB) accessibility accreditation – RNIB Approved.

This involved working closely with RNIB to ensure a selection of informative website pages were accessible – changes which will hugely benefit blind and partially sighted people living in the borough.

In order to achieve RNIB Approved accreditation, the pages of the Haringey website in question were first audited against the WCAG 2.0 AA Guidelines and then tested by blind and partially sighted users against a series of key tasks. Testers used a range of assistive devices such as screen readers, screen magnifiers and voiceover and touch controls on mobiles to test accessibility.

Feedback was then provided to Haringey’s web developers for implementation, with improvements made to the website templates, design and content to ensure the selected pages were accessible and easy to navigate.

The award was given in May 2017 and is subject to bi-annual re-testing to ensure Haringey continues to maintain these standards, ensuring consistency for everyone visiting the Haringey Council website.

Disclaimer

This award only applies to web content provided by Haringey Council at www.haringey.gov.uk. Not all PDFs on the site are currently accessible. Some third party provided forms and online services linked to from the Haringey website have not been tested and may not be accessible. Haringey is reviewing all documents on the site and is working with external providers to improve the accessibility of those areas.

• View the RNIB Approved Accreditation Certificate (PDF, 184 KB)

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Contact

For more information about Haringey website development please contact Paul Barnett, Haringey Council Digital Communications Manager, at content@haringey.gov.uk.

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For information on website visitors and availability visit our website statistics page.