Accessibility Statement for www.centralswindonnorth-pc.gov.uk

Central Swindon North Parish Council is committed to making its website accessible.

This accessibility statement applies to www.centralswindonnorth-pc.gov.uk.

This website is run by Central Swindon North Parish. 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 using browser or device settings
• Zoom in up to 400% without the text spilling off the screen
• Navigate most of the website using a keyboard or speech recognition software

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

To assist with the accessibility of the Parish Council’s website, the Parish Council has installed the UserWay Accessibility Widget. Located at the left of each webpage on the website, this widget offers a broad selection of functions that users can mix and match to meet their individual accessibility needs. The functions include, but are not limited, to:

• Keyboard Navigation: Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard.
• Contrast: Change contrast levels. Choose from the following: normal contrast, invert colours, dark contrast, light contrast and desaturate.
• Highlight Links
• Bigger Text: Choose from four increasing font sizes without the text spilling off the screen.
• Text Spacing: Modify line spacing for improved readability for dyslexic and visually impaired users.
• Pause Animations
• Hide Images
• Dyslexia Friendly: converts to more accessible fonts and layout for dyslexic users of the website.
• Big Cursor: Enlarges the cursor for better visibility.
• Reading Mask: Applies a semi-transparent mask around the cursor to aid in reading.
• Reading Guide: Provides a horizontal guide to help users follow lines of text more easily.
• Tooltips: Shows alternative text and aria labels for on-screen elements with a simple mouse hover. Tooltips are prominent, high contrast and easy to read for low vision users with accessibility needs.
• Line Height: Adjust the vertical spacing between lines of text with our Line Height options. This feature allows users to choose the spacing that best suits their reading comfort and needs.
• Text Align: Customize text alignment with options to align text left, centre, right, or justify. This feature helps users view and organize text according to their preferences and accessibility requirements.
• Saturation: The Saturation feature allows users to adjust the intensity of colours on the page. It includes options for low and high saturation to suit different visual preferences. Additionally, the desaturate option reduces colors to grayscale, providing a simplified and more comfortable viewing experience for end-users who may be sensitive to bright colours. Please note that Firefox is not supported due to browser limitation.
• Move/Hide Accessibility Widget: Allows the user to move the accessibility widget to reposition the widget to the left or right of the screen, or hide the widget.

Languages

Our website is written and published in English. We’ve made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

Machine Translation for several languages is provided by the free third party website plugin, GTranslate, which may be accessed through the onscreen widget marked with a nation flag and name of the language that is displayed at the top-right of each webpage on our site.

Machine translation is provided for convenience only and may not be completely accurate, contextually precise, or error-free.

The primary and official version of this website is written in English. In the event of any conflict, discrepancy, or ambiguity between a translated version and the English version, the English version shall prevail and be deemed authoritative.

To the maximum extent permitted by UK law, Central Swindon North Parish accepts no responsibility or liability for any losses, costs, or damages arising out of or in connection with reliance on or the use of automated translations provided on this website.

Users may use machine translation on our website to automatically translate webpage content to the following languages:

Czech
Polish
Slovakian
Ukrainian
Portuguese
French
Spanish
German
Romanian
Turkish
Bengali
Hindi
Punjabi
Tamil
Urdu
Nepali
Chinese (simplified)

Additional languages may be added to this list on request if they are supported by GTranslate.

Compliance status

The website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard. This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-Accessible Content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons:

• Some links may use the same link text for different destinations. This can make link purpose unclear for screen reader users.
• Some headings do not accurately describe the content below them.
• Some section blocks utilize heading structures, but nested lists and repeated blocks jump structural levels, which can disorient screen reader users navigating by heading landmarks.
• Repeated navigation elements use ambiguous link text such as “Find out more and book” without context attached directly to the link. Assistive technologies reading a list of page links out of context will see multiple identical entries without knowing which facility they correspond to.
• Some PDFs are not in a machine readable format.
• Some PDFs lack tags and other metadata.
• Some pages contain embedded online systems which may not be
• Alt-text is not included for the majority of images.
• Alt-text is often repeated on the same page which means that screen readers read the name twice in succession, creating unnecessary audio clutter.
• Parish Council content stored and produced by third parties or using third party software.
• Image link lack accessible names.

Disproportionate burden

Nothing is cited as being a disproportionate burden.

Third-party systems

Some council services are provided through third-party systems.

These systems may look different from www.centralswindonnorth-pc,gov,uk. Some may not meet WCAG 2.2 AA or have not been fully verified by us.

These include:

• Rialtas venue booking system
• Xn booking system
• MEC calendar
• Embedded social media feeds

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

• Some of our older PDF and Word documents, particularly those published before 23 September 2018, may not fully meet accessibility standards. We are not required to fix these unless they are essential to using our services, but we are working to improve the accessibility of the documents used most often.
• Live video. We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Central Swindon North Parish Council is committed to making its website accessible in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

To ensure our digital services and venue information remain accessible to all residents, we are actively taking the following steps:

• Alternative Text for Images: We are carrying out an ongoing audit of all images across the website—including room hire pages and facility guides—to ensure all meaningful images include clear, descriptive text, and decorative icons are appropriately hidden from screen readers.
• Link Clarity & Navigation: We are revising link descriptions across our booking and venue pages so that links explicitly state their destination (for example, updating generic “Find out more” links to specify the venue or document).
• Document Remediation: We are working to ensure that essential downloadable documents, including facility hire conditions and safety guides, are provided in accessible formats or replaced with accessible web pages where possible.
• Forms & Interactive Features: We are reviewing our online booking tools and enquiry forms to ensure full keyboard accessibility and visible focus indicators for screen reader and keyboard-only users.
• Staff Training & Governance: We are providing accessibility training to council staff responsible for uploading website content and documents, ensuring all future updates meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA standards.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 1 October 2026.

This website was last tested on 1 October 2026 against the WCAG 2.2 AA standard.

The test was carried out by Central Swindon North Parish Council. The most viewed pages were tested using automated testing tools by our website team.

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).

Feedback and contact information

If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact us:

• Telephone: 01793 466499 option 1
• Via our website contact form: https://centralswindonnorth-pc.gov.uk/contact-us/
• Email: Andy Reeves, Parish Clerk at clerk@centralswindonnorth-pc.gov.uk