Wealden District Council
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Wealden District Council > Accessibility > Accessibility Statement

Accessibility Statement

Using this website

This website is run by Wealden District Council. This accessibility statement relates to www.wealden.gov.uk.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website.

We are always working to make our website as accessible and usable as possible.

For example, that means you should be able to:

  • zoom in up to 400% 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)

Also you should be able to do the following using ReadSpeaker free software:

  • read the page out loud or read selected text
  • remove clutter and display only the main text customise options to suit your individual needs or preferences

We have also tried to make the website text easy to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible is our website – Automated checking report May 2026

To meet the accessibility standards. We aim to meet A and AA Standards as set out in WCAG 2.2.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the following:

Where we are not fully meeting WCAG2.2 AA standard:

We have 11 pages where headings do not clearly describe the content they introduce.

This check is automated using Siteimprove AI. The results are not always reliable and we manually audit the results on a regular basis.

These issues will be fixed as they appear.

We have 4 pages where colour contrast is not sufficient. This relates to link colour on notifications, which are not always present on the website.

We aim to fix this issue by July 2026

How accessible is our website – manual checking

Having done automated and manual checks including an accessibility audit we know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  1. Older documents. Most older PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. The Accessibility regulations 2018 do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.
  2. Third Party content. Some Local Plan pages and associated PDFs have a few broken links as they were developed by a third party.
  3. Some documents may not be accessible yet including PDFs have been added on to our website after 23 September 2018. We are working towards converting these to HTML or accessible documents using a third party, our Web Development Team and various departments. We have introduced a new content policy and are working with a third party to give training to staff. We have kept close monitoring and can see that 23 of the PDFs have had more than 50 views on our website so these will be our priority. We are also considering creating a PDF policy and how best we can adopt this.
  4. Some of our resource documents, such as posters, are designed to be downloaded and printed, so these may not be fully accessible.

Disproportionate burden

We believe that fixing accessibility problems with some content would be disproportionate; this mostly relates to large complex documents and third-party systems.

This could be because they are too technically complex to change, have low usage but high costs to change, we may not own the source/copyright or we are unable to influence third party supplier development plans.

In the future when replacing systems or commissioning new documents we will look for ones that do meet accessibility standards.

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like large print, easy read, audio recording or braille please fill in our contact us form.

You can get alternatives to non-accessible content by:

Viewing PDFs by getting the latest free Adobe Reader software

Listening to our website or translating it using ReadSpeaker on our website

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, please fill in our report a website fault 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 are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us

The best way to contact us is online, using our contact us form.

Our reception is currently close but we can arrange an appointment by arrangement. Our reception has audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

Technical information about the accessibility of this website

Wealden District Council is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

How we tested this website

Our website is checked by Siteimprove for Level A, AA and AAA standards of the WCAG 2.2. We continue to monitor issues that arise using their live report for our website. We aim to fix them as soon as we are able to.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

We have produced an accessibility roadmap below which shows how and when we plan to improve accessibility on our website.

Now

Accessibility Audit of all documents on this website – This is currently in progress using Siteimprove to identify those documents published since 23 September 2018 so we can determine what can be fixed given our staff resources. We  are also creating further training for staff.

Next

Accessibility Audit of all website pages – We use Siteimprove on a daily basis to check the accessibility of our web pages and flag up any potential issues. We complete regular website audits focussing on five areas.

Future

Consider and action any issues arising from the above accessibility audits

We will also continue to fix issues as they arise from the live Siteimprove report for our website.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 15 September 2020.

It was last reviewed on 05 May 2026.