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Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to www.sandwell.gov.uk.It does not apply to content on subdomains (for example, my.sandwell.gov.uk).
This website is run by Sandwell Council. 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:

you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
live video streams do not have captions
Some form controls do not have labels
Some links do not explicitly explain their purpose
Some tables require headers

Feedback and contact information or 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 or have any other feedback you can contact Sandwell council:
Online at: https://www.sandwell.gov.uk/feedback

By telephone: 0121 569 7867

Or by writing to us:
Customer Feedback Team
Sandwell Council
Direct 2 Industrial Estate
Roway Ln
Oldbury
B69 3ES

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.

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

We provide a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.
Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.
Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Sandwell Council 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 the exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

WCAG 1.3.1 Info and relationships
Cookie popup - Issue where a link is programmatically a button

WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast (minimum)
Colour contrast issue on the 'Contact the council' page

WCAG 1.4.4 Resize text
Privacy pop up - text difficult to read after increasing font size

WCAG 2.1.1 Keyboard
Keyboard accessibility issues on privacy button
Keyboard accessibility issues on search toggle button

WCAG 2.4.4 Link purpose (in context)
Pagination links not clear

WCAG 2.4.7 Focus visible
Focus styling issues across multiple pages

WCAG 4.1.2 Name, role, value
Search button has no accessible name

WCAG 4.1.3 Status messages
Privacy pop up - Cog icon not alerted to screen reader users

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

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

How we tested this website

This website is tested each month by Silktide and the report is released on the first of each month.
We also test individual pages using Wave - Web AIM web accessibility evaluation tool and the AXE accessibility tool.

A site wide audit was run on 18/08/20 by Jadu against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21
An audit was also carried out on 18/10/21 by the Accessibility Monitoring Team of the Cabinet Office.
The accessibility report can be viewed here.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We are working with our CMS provider to fix any content which fails to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. We will continue to update this page when issues are fixed.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 18 August 2020. It was last reviewed on 16 February 2022.