Accessibility statement for www.bexley.gov.uk

This accessibility statement applies to the London Borough of Bexley's website at www.bexley.gov.uk.

This website is run by the London Borough of Bexley. 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.

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, for example:

  • many older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software

Feedback and contact information

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

We’ll consider your request and get back to you as soon as possible.

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, please contact the Digital Team:

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

If you are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment and need assistance when contacting us by phone or visiting us in person, then please contact the Bexley Deaf Centre:

For more information, visit the Bexley Deaf Centre website.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The London Borough of Bexley 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.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Recruitment website accessibility statement

The Council is aware that its Recruitment website site does not fully comply with W3C / WCAG accessibility guidelines.

View the recruitment accessibility statement

PDF files in relation to the latest Article 4 Direction

Due to legal reasons PDFs in relation to the latest Article 4 Direction consultation do not comply with W3C / WCAG accessibility guidelines, although we have intended to make these PDFs as accessible as possible there is some content that is not suitable for assistive technology such as screen readers. As an alternative we have developed a fully accessible version of the Article 4 Direction which also includes an accessible interactive map which serves as an alternative to the maps within the PDF documents. Subject to legal advice, these PDFs will be removed once the consultation has finished in February 2024.

Chat Window

The automated Chat Window is partially compliant to WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility guidelines.

The Chat Window typically fails the following WCAG 2.1 Success Criteria:

  • 1.1.1 (Non-Text content understanding), there are three elements where the text label required for screen readers is missing

  • 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships):

    • on some Android devices when using Talkback, a small number of elements are announced twice
    • on some iOS devices when using voiceover and choosing an option from a list, the option selected is not confirmed
    • on mobile devices, when Chat is minimised, focus remains on the Chat icon unless action is taken to return to the main web page

    In limited cases, screen readers do not announce the action taken.

  • 1.4.3 (Contrast minimum), there is one instance where white text on a sky blue background has been used.
  • 2.4.3 (Focus Order), when using the Tab key, some subheadings get focus and the Tab key has to be pressed again to progress.
  • 2.4.4 (Link Purpose (in context) and 3.2.1 (On Focus), when clicking on embedded links in chat messages, screen readers do not announce that the link will open in a new browser tab
  • 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value), the main chat window does not have a descriptive text label required for screen readers

Update 16 June 2023: we are awaiting a response from our third-party supplier on planned fixes to make the Chat Window more accessible within the scope of the public sector website accessibility regulations. We will provide an update on progress as soon as possible.

General PDF files

There are approximately 30 PDFs on this website that are not exempt from the regulations but which do not currently comply with them. These PDFs generally contain readable text content but have not been tagged or formatted to raise their accessibility up to the required standards. These PDFs therefore typically fail the following WCAG 2.1 success criteria:

  • 1.1.1 (non-text content), where the PDFs contain images that do not have an alternative text specified
  • 1.3.1 (info and relationships) and 2.4.6 (headings and labels), where the PDFs do not have tagged heading structures
  • 1.3.2 (meaningful sequence), where the text in PDFs has been created in floating text boxes (e.g. using desktop publishing software) and no reading order has been specified
  • 1.4.3 (contrast (minimum)), where text may have been created in a colour that does not contrast enough with its background colour
  • 3.1.1 (the language of page), where PDFs have not had a language specified in them – please read all such PDFs as UK English

There may also be a very small number of PDFs that currently fail success criterion 1.4.5 (images of text), where they contain scanned text which may not have been converted to computer-readable text.

All PDFs which have not been tagged for accessibility are flagged up in a short footnote (usually indicated by * or † symbols) immediately after all links to these PDFs. This footnote includes a link which you can use to request any PDFs' content in an accessible format.

Many of these PDFs are due to be replaced by the end of 2023.

PDF forms

The financial assessment for community services form is currently published as a PDF form, designed to be printed out and filled in by hand. These forms fail a number of WCAG 2.1 success criteria – but are also fundamentally inaccessible to anyone unable to print, see and write onto paper forms. The form is marked with a short footnote (indicated by *  symbol). This footnote includes a link that you can use to request the PDF form in an accessible format.

The Prevent referral form is currently published as a PDF form. Under the Prevent Duty we have a responsibility to help prevent the risk of people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. As part of this work we are hosting on our website the national referral form for Prevent which is used to refer those believed to be susceptible to radicalisation in for possible intervention.  We recognise there are accessibility issues with this document but we have made the decision to make it available in this format given it is considered the national referral form.

Disproportionate burden

The democracy portal

The London Borough of Bexley website provides a convenient and transparent access point to a paperless solution for the governance and meeting management used by the elected representative members of the Council. All the PDF documents found via the democracy.bexley.gov.uk link is a service provided by Civica using a third-party platform called Modern.Gov.

Elected members of the Council upload and manage documentation using the Modern.Gov application. These documents are then published automatically into a PDF format and made available to the public via the democracy.bexley.gov.uk link.

The status and volume of the documentation is constantly changing and being updated daily. The cost of converting these documents into accessible formats in such a fluid manner would be a disproportionate burden for the council at the present time

Planning Policy and Guidance

There are approximately 100 plus PDFs within the Planning Policy and Guidance section, the majority of which are not accessible. Although old in date, they are still current. The cost of converting these documents into accessible formats in such a fluid manner would be a disproportionate burden for the council at present.

All PDFs that have not been tagged for accessibility are flagged up in a short footnote (indicated by * symbol), which includes a link you can use to request any PDFs' content in an accessible format.

Planning Appeals

There are approximately 140 PDFs within the Planning Appeals section; about 100 are of historical reference or supplied by third parties and are not fully accessible. Around 40 have now been made accessible.

The cost of converting these documents into accessible formats would be a disproportionate burden for the council at present.

All PDFs that have not been tagged for accessibility are flagged up in a short footnote (indicated by * symbol), which includes a link you can use to request any PDFs' content in an accessible format.

Draft Design Guide SPD - Design Principles

This is currently published as a PDF for a Consultation. Due to requirements and deadlines, limited time and resources were not available to provide an accessible version by 22 July 2024. The PDF will be replaced with an HTML version for the final version, which is due by the end of 2024.

This PDF has not been tagged for accessibility and, therefore, is flagged up with a short footnote (indicated by * symbol), which includes a link you can use to request any PDFs' content in an accessible format.

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

PDFs and other documents

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 around 80 planning strategy documents which were published before this date.

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

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We relaunched our main website to bring it up to a higher standard of accessibility and have trained staff around the council to produce their content accessibly in future. We have also been auditing our other websites and the parts of this site which run on other systems and are addressing shortcomings on these as quickly as possible.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 24 July 2020 and reviewed on 14 August 2024.

This website was last tested in December 2023. Testing was carried out by our website's developers, Axis12, and by the London Borough of Bexley's Digital Team.

The site is built from reusable templates and features. Each of these was tested so that all pages were then made of parts that had been tested. Testing was carried out due to a system upgrade.