Website Accessibility

We’re working to make chester.gov.uk as accessible as possible for visitors regardless of their ability, disability or general awareness of using the internet. 

While we try to do our best there are some areas where we can improve – and that’s what we’re trying to do all the time – but for the majority of the site, we think we’ve done pretty well – you may not agree and if for any reason you don’t then please contact us to let us know. 

It is our aim to create a public sector site that stands out as an excellent site to visit – not just an excellent public sector site.  The standard of service and design you expect shouldn’t be any less, simply because we’re a local council and that’s something we feel strongly about.

The problem with trying to make a fully ‘inclusive site’ is that no single solution meets the needs of all users – and we’ve found that sometimes trying to improve the site for one particular disability can have an effect on our ability to meet the needs of another section of our audience. So while we do work to achieve all  World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 1.0  'Double A' standard as a minimum, sometimes we may not have got quite there on some pages.  Where this is the case, we'll tell you on our Known Accessibility Barriers page. 

We also try as much as possible to allow you to 'optimise your user experience' - put simply, let you view and use the Chester City Council website the way you want to - not the way we make you.  We've put together a full section on Using the site your way which offers help and advice not matter what type of browser or even computer you're using.

Where are your badges?

Oh you mean the AA compliant badges and the W3C, CSS and XHTML approved badges?  Well we don’t display accessibility or standards badges. 

You shouldn’t have to rely on badges to know that the site you’re visiting is well written, designed correctly or is as accessible as it should be – it’s something you should expect.  And if we’re honest, we’d rather tell you if a page doesn’t meet the required standards so that you know if you may have problems.  Which is exactly what we do on our Known Accessibility Barriers page.

Besides, most people are a bit skeptical when they see such badges as some sites that aren’t very good happily display them regardless of how accessible or standards compliant they are - or aren't - unfortunately public sector sites have been amongst the worst culprits – which kind of devalues the whole thing. 

So you may not see any ‘approved this’ or ‘approved that’ badges on our site, but you can be confident that we work hard to achieve those standards.

Minimum Standards

There are a series of tasks we believe any user of this site should be able to perform regardless of disability or experience in using websites.  Essentially it is what every user has a minimum expectation of being able to achieve on this site.  More details are available on our Minimum Standards page.

Design Standards

We’ve designed this site – and all our sites actually -  to meet the WCAG Version 1.0, dated May 5, 1999. Version 2.0 is currently a working draft but we’ve had a peek at that too and where possible we try to incorporate some of those draft guidelines into the site. 

The following are some of the key standards our web team have adopted based on these guidelines, as well as the numerous guidelines we receive from government as a public sector site.  Sometimes these can seem to offer a conflicting approach – so when that happens, we take a deep breath and decide which one we think is best for our users.

Structure

• There’s only one version of our site with no back entrances or toned down styles if you have an older browser or use a screen reader (unless you specifically select them) – all our visitors get the same thing, a single accessible version.
• We’ve worked hard to make the site structure as consistent and as usable as possible.  This is harder than it looks and we’re essentially tweaking it all the time based on what you tell us.
• If you ever get lost, we’ve provided a sitemap and also bread crumb trails on every page, so you can leave that back button alone and just retrace your steps.
• We’ve tried to keep everything as simple as possible.

Content

• We try to write in short, clear sentences – getting straight to the point. 
• The structure of our pages are all very similar in an attempt to make the content as accessible as possible – with clear, meaningful headings.
• We provide text alternatives for all images – except when they are purely decorative.
• We provide links to further information or relevant references in the body of the content – this makes it easier for you to access the specific information you’re after, knowing what to expect.
• We use only relevant images
• We use pull-down menus sparingly, if at all.
• We happily support font scaling and larger font sizes in general.

Code

• The site is fully XHTML and CSS standards compliant  – this would normally be shown by one of those badges we don’t display – so you‘ll have to take our word for it!
• The presentation is separate from structure.
• We endeavor to make forms more forgiving, with easy to read error messaging
• The website content will be device independent.

Browser Support

We design to support the following browsers specifically, as well as all standards-compliant browsers.

• Internet Explorer 5 for Windows
• Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh
• Internet Explorer 5.5 for Windows
• Internet Explorer 6 for Windows
• Internet Explorer 7 for Windows
• Mozilla Firefox for Windows
• Mozilla Firefox for Macintosh
• Netscape 7 for Windows
• Opera 7 for Windows
• Safari for Macintosh

 

Access Keys

At the moment we employ the UK government access key standard but we’re currently rethinking that approach.

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site and this can be a very useful feature for many users. However, access keys often conflict with keyboard shortcuts defined by the browser or operating system so at the moment there is a debate about whether they actually cause more problems than they solve.  

Links

You should be able to easily distinguish the links on our pages either through a change in font colour, underlining or an other facility to show it is a link.  Most links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, even if the text of the link already fully describes the target.  Whenever possible, these links are written to make sense out of context and all links can be followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off.

External Links

We no longer open external links in a new window. While this is often seen as the more logical and accessible way of providing links to external sites, recent research - supported by the W3C - has shown opening extra windows for new content can actually be more disorientating.  As a result, we have taken the decision to open external links in the same browser - although all links will clearly be marked as external.

Plain English

All of our webmasters must undergo training in Plain English before they are allowed to provide any content for the site.  This means that the site will be written as clearly and simply as possible - and not in 'council speak'  Where we do have to employ abbreviations of acronyms, we provide the full term when you move your mouse over the word (signified by a dotted line and a question mark on your mouse pointer).

Want to know more?

So without being to technical, that about sums it up.  If you have any questions, problems or issues then please feel free to contact the webteam at webmaster@chester.gov.uk.