The North East Combined Authority is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (external website) (‘the Accessibility Regulations’)
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.
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Not all our documents are fully accessible.
Some PDFS are not fully accessible, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content) and WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.5 (Multiple Ways).
For inaccessible PDFs, we ask content authors to provide a basic plain-text alternative, preferably in Open Document (ODT) or Microsoft Word format.
Inaccessible aspects of some of our documents include:
Where documents are not in the format that you need, you can request an alternative by emailing us here.
We plan to add text alternatives for all images and bookmarks to PDFs by September 2024. When we add new PDFs, we’ll make sure they meet accessibility standards.
Some iFrames are missing the ‘title’ attribute. This may make it difficult for people to know what content is contained in the iFrame before you interact with it, especially when using a screen reader.
Some iFrames have a title attribute but not a very meaningful one, for example title=“blank”.
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks, and 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.
Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).
We plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2024. When we publish new content, we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.
Not all links use meaningful link text and/or specify whether the link goes to an external website or opens a new tab or window. This may make it difficult for people to know where a link is going to and could open a new tab or window without you knowing before you click it.
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text content, 2.4.4 Link purpose and 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.
The accessibility of embedded video content is dependent on the standards reached by the third-party provider, for example YouTube. Where possible we make use of features such as subtitles, transcripts and captions to ensure our content is accessible. Some of our older videos that are within scope of the guidelines do not have subtitles, however our more recent ones do.
Some of our videos have subtitles that have been automatically generated and have not been reviewed by a human, which can lead to some errors in translation.
Some of our videos have meaningful visual content (e.g. animated text), but no audio track, description or transcript. Some of our videos have meaningful audio content (e.g. music or sound effects), but no captions.
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.1 Audio only and video only (prerecorded), 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded), 1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded), and 1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded).
The annual statement of accounts documents are not accessible and a claim of disproportionate burden is in place. The annual statement contains some tables that have been placed as images and are so not accessible. Other changes relating to alt-text, reformatting e.g. font, spacing have been actioned and are accessible.
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. Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.
The Visual Map we use for some of our reporting is not keyboard accessible. There is a sidebar (text alternative) which allows searching and navigation capabilities reflecting the same functionality as the map. The Map is a visual way to show the locations, these are listed in the sidebar. The accessibility regulations do not require maps to be accessible if essential information is provided.
This statement was prepared on 20 April 2024; it was last reviewed on 1 May 2024.
This website was last tested in May 2024 The test was carried out by our website provider and the tools used were: