Accessibility Statement
Our Policy
Cheshire East Council is committed to ensuring that this website
is accessible to the widest possible range of people, regardless of
technology or disability. We are therefore actively working to
increase the accessibility and usability of our website and ensure
that it adheres to many of the available standards and
guidelines.
What are we doing to ensure we meet the criteria?
The Government requires that all public sector websites should
meet the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
1.0, to Level AA. These guidelines are based on good design
practice and exist to ensure that no individual is excluded due to
disability or choice of device or software.
We aim to achieve level AA and to comply with as many of the
features of AAA as are possible, but recognise that this is not
always achievable for the entire website.
Main Accessibility Features
Top Navigation Bar
On the navigation bar at the top of every page, you can:
- Listen to the website
- Resize text
- View a text only version of the site
- Change the language
Audibility of the site – ReadSpeaker
We provide an audio facility for listening to Cheshire East
Council website content. Please select 'Listen to this page'
from the top header bar. This facility is particularly
useful for people who are visually impaired, or for whom English is
not their first language and therefore find difficulty with
reading. With this facility you can have the site content read
aloud to you, including text, links, images, and documents in
Microsoft Word, PDF (Portable Document Format) and RTF (Rich Text
Format) format.
Text/Font Size
Text/Font sizes are set to relative units rather than absolute
units. This setting allows people to increase or decrease text size
in their web browser. At the very top of each web page on the
Cheshire East website (in the header) there is a font resizing tool
that allows you to increase or decrease the text size on the
page.
You can also use your browsers built in accessibility
functions.
To do this you need to change a setting on your internet
browser.
Internet Explorer users should click View > Text Size and select
from the options.
Netscape users should click View > Increase Font.
Text Only Version Website
W3C recommends that only if after best efforts the website
cannot be made accessible, then a text only version should be
provided.
RNIB
recommends
against providing text only versions as much as possible, simply
because being treated differently can reinforce the feeling of
marginalisation that someone with a disability experiences. All
pages on the Cheshire East website can be viewed as Text Only.
Language - Google Translate
Translations of this site are provided by Google Translate.
For more details, please see our Language Translation page.
Access keys
Access keys are keyboard shortcuts. They offer an alternative
access method to the users who are using a mouse or other pointing
devices. UK government access key standards have been adopted for
Cheshire East Council (CEC) website general information pages, e.g.
Contact us, A to Z, Site Map. For the list of access keys used on
the Cheshire East Council website and how to use access keys in
different web browsers, please visit our Access Key page.
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS2) are used on all Cheshire East web
pages to set design and layout elements, e.g. colours, background
colours, alignment, spacing, border, font sizes and types. The
advantage of using
CSS
is to give you the choice of switching off the Cheshire East style
sheet and using your own style sheet instead. The web pages are
designed to be read in the correct order, even if the style sheets
are switched off.
Alt tag for all images
We aim to use images relevant to the content. All images used in
the website have alternate text descriptions, which are known as
their 'alt' tag. These help visually impaired users to identify
what the images represent.
Data Table Headers
If a data table is presented, table headers, summary and caption
are provided where appropriate to help you understand the data
table structure and its data.
External Links
All external links are labelled as such using the link title.
The link title can be seen when you hover your mouse over the link.
Any links that open in a new window display a warning of
this.
Web Accessiblity Links
Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG)
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) documents explain
how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. Web
"content" generally refers to the information in a Web page or Web
application, including text, images, forms, sounds, and such.
RNIB - Web Access Centre
The Web Access Centre is a source of information for web designers,
developers, content authors and website managers. Here you will
find advice on how to plan, build and test accessible websites.
Microsoft
Accessibility Keyboard Assistance
Finds keyboard shortcuts for leading Microsoft products that help
save time and effort and provide an essential tool for some people
with mobility impairments.
Acrobat solutions
for accessibility
Adobe helps make electronic information more accessible to people
with disabilities including but not limited to: blindness, low
vision, hearing, or motor impairments.