Accessibility

This statement was prepared on 17th January 2022. 

At Harrow Council we use Silktide to scan our entire website on a weekly basis. This way our sample size for testing accessibility standards is our full directory of web pages.

This accessibility statement applies to the Harrow Council website www.harrow.gov.uk

This website is run by the digital team at Harrow Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. 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 used readability tools such as hemingway app to make the website content as simple as possible to understand.

Browser support

We support the following browsers:

  • IE7 and above
  • Recent versions of Mozilla Firefox
  • Google Chrome
  • iOS Safari
  • Android 2.3 and above

Site compatibility and screen readers

Our website should be compatible with basic operating system screen magnifiers; speech recognition software, e.g. Dragon Naturally Speaking; and operating system speech packages.

Our website should be compatible with recent versions of the following screen readers:

  • Jaws
  • ZoomText
  • NVDA
  • VoiceOver
  • Window Eyes
  • Supernova screen readers
  • MAGic

Reporting accessibility problems with our website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, or if you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements please contact us using our website feedback form.

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

Harrow 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

We continually strive to provide a website that meets the standards set out in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1. Consequently our site is:

  • Partially compliant with A and AA standards, due to the non-compliances listed in the section below.
  • Not compliant with the AAA standard, due to the non-compliances listed in the section below.

Low accessibility areas of the website

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

Images without alt-text

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails certain success criterion in WCAG 2.1.

We plan to add text alternatives for all images by Q1 2023. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Reporting maps

Some of our reporting maps are reportedly hard to navigate making it difficult to access information for users of screen readers. This fails certain success criterion in WCAG 2.1.

We plan to revisit our mapping solution and provide a fully accessible mapping service by Q4 2023.

Colour contrasting

Some of our website element colours do not currently adhere to the required colour contrast protocol. This fails certain success criterion in WCAG 2.1.

We plan fix our colour contrast issue by Q3 2022.

PDF readability

Some of our PDF content on the website is not fully readable making it difficult to access information for users of screen readers. This fails certain success criterion in WCAG 2.1.

We are actively optimising our non-readable PDFs on the website and hope to have eliminated all non-readable PDFs by Q1 2023.

Contacting us or visiting us in person

Find out how you can visit us on our contact us page.