Council Matters: Accessibility Statement

This statement was adopted on 4th February 2020 and updated following improvements to the website in 2024. 

Accessibility statement for northhuishparishcouncil.co.uk

This website is run by North Huish Parish Council. You should be able to:

  • view this site on a wide range of screen sizes
  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate the website using just a keyboard

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:

  • some PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • there are no transcripts of the full audio recordings of the website

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format, please contact us:

  • Telephone: (01364) 654 607
  • Address: 34 Balland Park, Ashburton TQ13 7BT
  • E-mail : [js protected email address]

We are keen to match the accessibility of this website to the needs of our parishioners. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting your accessibility requirements, you can use the same contact details to get in touch.

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).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

You can telephone the Clerk on (01364) 654 607 and you are welcome to attend our public meetings. Contact details for individual councillors are available here.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

North Huish 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.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non accessible content

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

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

Text transcripts

We do not provide a text transcript of the full audio recordings of council meetings. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.2.1 (Audio-only and Video-only).

Inaccessible PDFs

Some PDFs are not structured with machine-readable headings. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.10 (Section Headings) and WCAG 2.2 success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, Role Value).

Some PDFs contain scanned images of official forms, or have ticks rather than ‘yes’. This fails the most basic requirements of WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content).

Some PDFs have text that is too closely typed, failing success criterion 1.4.12 (Text Spacing).

Disproportionate burden

Statutory PDFs

Some of our statutory documents are presented as PDFs containing scanned images of official forms. In particular, certain financial documents must legally be signed in ink on paper, so can only be presented as scanned images at present. This fails the most basic requirements of WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content).

Until we are supplied with official versions of these documents which allow us to meet the accessibility requirements, improving these documents would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will reassess this each year.

Text transcripts

It is not practical to transcribe the full content of the audio recordings of our meetings, as it would be too expensive to transcribe them manually and it is not possible to transcribe them automatically due to the large number of local terms that are not understood by machine transcribers. Transcribing these recordings would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. The minutes are a summary of the audio recording and are presented in an accessible format.

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs do not meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.2 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

Some of these PDFs are legally required to be published and based on official forms. For example, we have PDFs with accounting and governance information.

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 archived copies of our agendas or statutory documents. However, we have created accessible copies of our minutes from 2013 onwards.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards where we may legally take steps to do so.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested in February 2025. The test was carried out by Cllr Tristram Grevatt.

Due to the small number of parishioners who form the target for the NHPC website, and the high costs of contracting a third party to carry out a detailed accessibility check, we have restricted our checks to a basic check of the site’s accessibility in accordance with government guidelines at www.gov.uk/government/publications/doing-a-basic-accessibility-check-if-you-cant-do-a-detailed-one, supplemented with automatic testing using several tools.

We tested our main website, available at www.northhuishparishcouncil.co.uk and www.northhuishparishcouncil.com according to the guidance given at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/doing-a-basic-accessibility-check-if-you-cant-do-a-detailed-one/doing-a-basic-accessibility-check-if-you-cant-do-a-detailed-one using the automated tools available at wave.webaim.org, the IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker and the Lighthouse accessibility tool.

We included the home page, a selection of council meetings, a selection of policies, our contact form and the page listing our councillors and contacts.