This statement was initially published in January 2022 and updated in June 2023.
Here at the London Borough of Harrow we use Silktide to scan our entire website on a weekly basis. This ensures that we test our full directory of web pages against accessibility standards.
The following accessibility statement applies to the Harrow Council website www.harrow.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’).
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.
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 Silktide 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 is compatible with basic operating system screen magnifiers; speech recognition software, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking; and operating system speech packages. This includes the following:
- Jaws
- ZoomText
- NVDA
- VoiceOver
- Window Eyes
- Supernova screen readers
- MAGic
Reporting accessibility problems with our website
We’re always looking to improve our accessibility rating. In addition to the information on the website we can also provide content in the following formats:
- accessible PDF
- large print
- easy read
- audio recording
- braille
If you need any of the above or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements please contact us using our website feedback form.
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. 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.
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.
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; this is an ongoing project.
Contacting us or visiting us in person
Find details to visit us via our contact us page.
If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).