Accessibility Statement – Hellesdon Parish Council

Hellesdon 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 accessibility statement applies to this website under the domain name hellesdon-pc.gov.uk.

Compliance status

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

The website itself was rebuilt in 2026. Every page and template was retested in August 2026 and no issues were found by either of the two testing tools we use. The documents published on the website are a separate matter and are described below.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reason(s):

(a) non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Documents. Our PDF documents — agendas, minutes, policies and financial records — are not fully accessible to assistive technology. In August 2026 we improved all 3,998 of them: every document now carries a readable title and a language setting, and the 539 that were scans of paper with no machine-readable text have had a text layer added, so a screen reader can now read them. Every PDF on this site is also published as a web page — look for the “Read as a web page” link beside any download — and that web version is accessible. The PDFs themselves are still not tagged to the PDF/UA standard: we tested a random sample of 300 documents and none met it in full. The main barriers are untagged content, tables without header information, images without descriptions, and links without descriptive text. This fails WCAG 2.2 criteria 1.1.1 Non-text Content, 1.3.1 Info and Relationships and 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value. If you need any document in a different format, please contact us and we will provide one.
Photographs in galleries. Photographs shown in event galleries are presented without individual text descriptions. We have not invented descriptions for them, because a description written from a filename is of no use to anyone; the galleries are labelled so their purpose is announced. This may fail 1.1.1 Non-text Content where a photograph carries information not given elsewhere on the page.

We are addressing documents on a rolling basis, prioritising those in current use. New documents are published as web pages wherever we can, because a web page is accessible from the start and does not need fixing later.

(b) disproportionate burden

We are not currently claiming that any content places a disproportionate burden on us.

(c) the content is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Documents such as PDFs published before 23 September 2018 are exempt from the regulations where they are not essential to an active administrative process. Much of our archive is historical material of this kind — minutes and agendas going back many years — kept online as a public record. If you need an older document in an accessible format, contact us and we will provide one.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 23 June 2026. It was last reviewed on 26 August 2026.

This statement was prepared using an assessment carried out by Web Design Norfolk (xpose.online) on behalf of the Council.

The website was first tested in June 2026, and retested in August 2026 after it was rebuilt. Testing covered all 68 page templates and pages using two independent tools — the axe-core accessibility engine and HTML CodeSniffer — checked against WCAG 2.2 A and AA, at both a desktop screen width and a 320-pixel mobile width. Manual checks covered the contact form, the page layout at narrow widths, and heading and landmark structure.

We want to be clear about the limits of this testing. Automated tools reliably detect only part of the accessibility standard. They cannot judge whether wording makes sense out of context, whether a photograph has been described usefully, or how the site behaves for somebody using a screen reader from end to end. We have not yet carried out a full assisted-technology audit or testing with disabled users, and we will say so here when we have.

Feedback and contact information

To notify Hellesdon Parish Council of any compliance failures and to request information and content excluded from the scope of the Directive please contact clerk@hellesdon-pc.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).