Stirling Council search Emergency Closure Parking, Roads, Pavement and Building Closures Home Council, Democracy & Elections Access to Information Accessibility Statement for Stirling Council Accessibility Statement for Stirling Council In order to provide our citizens with clear and transparent information regarding accessibility, we have a single accessibility statement that covers a number of sites. This accessibility statement refers to our primary domain, subdomains website and satellite sites as listed below. www.stirling.gov.uk (primary domain) www.investinstirling.com www.yourstirling.com www.conference.yourstirling.com Stirling Council and its services also manage and provide other websites. If they are not listed here, you should be able to find localised accessibility statements on the individual sites. If you have any issues finding them, please do not hesitate to let us know and we can support. These websites are run by Stirling Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use them. For example, that means you should be able to: Zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen Navigate our website regardless of device/screen size used Navigate all forms using just a keyboard Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard Listen to most of the websites using screen reader software Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software 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. Compliance status This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 AAA standard, due to the “non-compliances” listed below. Maintaining this standard is an exercise in continuous delivery. Stirling Council uses the third party, and World Wide Web Consortium (w3c) partner, SiteImprove to continually analyse and improve our website. How accessible this website is We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible: You cannot modify the line height or spacing of text Most PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software You cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader There is a limit to how far you can magnify certain maps Non-compliances The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons. Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations: PDFs are not screen-reader accessible. We are working to resolve this on newly uploaded PDFs in the future. There is no “” button on any of our pages. Largely, these would not be appropriate as we aim to have streamlined pages, however, in the few pages where this might be appropriate, we have not yet implemented a solution but plan to do so in the future. Disproportionate burden As of 10th September 2021, there were 4,423 documents on stirling.gov.uk. The Council is unable to track when these documents were uploaded due to a lack of analytic tracking prior to 30th September 2020. Of these: 2,243 have been viewed fewer than 5 times 3,007 have been viewed fewer than 10 times only 271 have been viewed more than 50 times Estimated costs We have assessed that it could cost Stirling Council between £220,000 and £230,000 for an external expert to do a detailed check (and later re-audit) our website. These costs are based on estimates from our current website supplier that quoted a day rate of £350 for a similar specialist role. Cost of fixing documents It is difficult to know how long it would take to make every document accessible without first reviewing each one. However, if it took one hour to review and fix each document within scope, fixing all 4,423 would take 631 working days to complete. As noted above without undertaking an audit of when the documents had been published, this number may be smaller. However, considering the number of current PDFs, this audit would also require resources and time. Assessment of costs and benefits Our assessment has highlighted that the cost of paying for a detailed audit and check of our website and then fixing all documents would be a disproportionate burden on our organisation. Stirling Council is dedicated to offering accessible digital services. However, the benefit to users of paying for a detailed check, as well as assigning resources to fix all the relevant PDF documents on our websites, would not be justified and would impose a disproportionate burden on the Council. As part of this review, we have considered: Our organisation’s size and resources COVID-19 has placed a considerable strain on all public sector bodies. Stirling Council has been no different and to respond to the increase in service requests, Stirling Council is managing increasing front-line service demands with a reduced annual budget. COVID-19 has forced us to re-prioritise where we target resources as well as maintaining business continuity of essential community support. Our website is managed by the Digital Team. This team has limited resource and in order to manage this request, considering the estimated time it would take, would require a full-time resource. If we had to reallocate one full-time person as estimated above, this would have a significant impact on our ability to continue to offer responsive digital services. Our organisation The Council are building a new website to ensure that all our content and transactional processes are managed and maintained with accessibility at the heart. As we transition to our new site, the estimated costs and benefits to our organisation and citizens of spending £230,000 on our current site is unreasonable. We believe that maintaining statutory and essential front-line services should be prioritised overpaying for independent website audits. It would be reasonable to suggest that within the meaning of the No. 2 Regulations, carrying out basic checks of our website and using the available budget to fix the crucial issues found on our sites with an aim to addressing and fixing these issues in the new website due to go live by the end of the year. Our services will be assisted in their basic checks by: accessibility monitoring software, Site Improve. The Council pays over £6,000 annually for this software internal guidance and support from the Digital Team Ongoing support from our new website supplier Our Digital Team has been leading on the detailed check of stirling.gov.uk and our digital services. However, the Digital Team are also responsible for the wider digital landscape as well operational support for stirling.gov.uk. The scale of the audit and relevant fixes leading up to 23 September 2020 did mean the team lacked the capacity to address this in advance of the Accessibility Regulations coming into force. Benefits that fixing issues would bring to users We want all the information we publish to be accessible to everyone who accesses our websites. The estimated costs to our organisation in relation to the benefit it will have for our users does not appear proportionate. If users require documentation while we work on addressing this issue, they can contact Stirling Council’s Digital Team who can arrange for an accessible copy to be made available. We are actively working on making our websites and online documents accessible. However, considering we are in the process of moving to a new website that has been built in line with Government Digital Standards and Accessibility Guidance, this would be a beneficial use of resources. We also believe that users will benefit most from us focusing our available resources on fixing the most used documents on stirling.gov.uk and ensuring that new documents are accessible where they are required for essential services or used by people with disabilities. How long do you expect this disproportionate burden to apply Our new site will go live in early 2022. We will provide HTML documents for any new documents added to the site and all older PDF’s will be translated to PDF or the user will be able to request an accessible copy while we work on the backlog. We are actively planning to ensure we are able to offer compliant, accessible documentation to our users. Stirling Council will launch the new website at the end of 2021, this site aligns with Government Digital Standards and accessibility guidelines. We are currently scoping the requirements to source resources so we can plan to start to migrate Council documents to HTML format. 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 Stirling Council is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. 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 please contact us via email. We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 3 working days. We can provide a text relay service for people who are deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment upon request. If this is required please email customer services and it can be arranged. If you want to phone us with any general customer enquiries the customer service team can be reached on 01786 404040. 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. Preparation of this accessibility statement This statement was prepared on 8 September 2020. Testing is continuously undertaken on all our web products by our Digital Team. Last updated: Wednesday, September 15, 2021 5:37 PM Access to Information Data Protection & Privacy Statement Subject Access Request Freedom of Information Register of Personal Data Processing Records Management Pupil Records Publication Scheme Open Data FOI Exemptions A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z keyboard_arrow_up Back to Top Privacy Policy Cookies Data Protection Accessibility Statement Contact Us facebook twitter youtube flickr Stirling Council This site uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are essential, while others help us to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used. External Link Icon Necessary Cookies Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as page navigation and access to secure areas. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences. 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