Accessibility

Accessibility statement for Bolton Council

This accessibility statement applies to www.bolton.gov.uk.

This website is run by Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, 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 made the website text as simple as possible to understand, we follow the Plain English campaign and have been awarded the Internet Crystal Mark.

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:

  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • not all videos have captions

Feedback and contact information

If you need content from this website in a different format like an accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact us using the methods above.

All accessibility feedback will be responded to by the web team and monitored by the Equality and Inclusion Group. We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 2 working days.

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

We provide a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.

Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Bolton 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

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

  • Some tables in content do not have table row headers when needed. This means assistive technologies will not read the tables correctly. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships).
  • Images on some pages do not always have suitable image descriptions. Users of assistive technologies may not have access to information conveyed in images. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content).
  • Some pages have poor colour contrast. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.1 (Use of Colour).
  • Many documents are in less accessible formats, for example PDF. Non-HTML documents published on or after 23 September 2018 must have an accessible format.

PDFs and non-HTML documents

Many documents are not accessible in a number of ways including missing text alternatives and missing document structure, we have a programme to convert these into readable pages (where possible) before March 2023

Disproportionate burden

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

Non-HTML documents published before September 2018 do not need to be accessible - unless users need them to use a service.

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

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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 [example of non-essential document].

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We're using monitoring software provided by Monsido and working to fix errors and warnings on a daily basis. We report to our Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion group on a monthly basis to show progression.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 07 February 2022. It was last reviewed on 26 January 2022 at the Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion improvement group.

This website was last tested on 7 February. The test was carried out by Monsido.