Website Accessibility Statement

Accessibility statement for hlnsc.ac.uk

This accessibility statement applies to the website for Hereforshire, Ludlow & North Shropshire College, (also referred to as HLNSC College) – https://hlnsc.ac.uk

This website is run by HLNSC College. 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:

PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
there’s a limit to how far you can magnify the maps on our ‘contact us’ page
you may not be able to modify the line height or spacing of text in some places on the site.

Tools used on this site are regularly updated by various 3rd party developers. At any one time a new update might cause an accessibility issue within the code implemented.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

email enquiries@hlcollege.ac.uk
call 01432 352 235

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 21 days.

If you cannot view the maps on our ‘contact us’ page, call us on 01432 352 235 or email us at enquiries@hlcollege.ac.uk for directions.
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, please contact us or email enquiries@hlcollege.ac.uk. The Communications and Administration team will then review your concern and get back to you within 21 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

Find out how to contact us via our contact page, or call us on 01432 352 235 or email us at enquiries@hlcollege.ac.uk.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Hereforshire, Ludlow & North Shropshire College, (also referred to as HLNSC College) 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 exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

Some PDF documents currently lack a title that describes their topic or purpose. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.2 (Page Titled).

Certain aspects of technology used to create and edit this site may not pass all semantic tests, such as:

Areaproblemreasoncomment
Mega menuIDs of active elements must be uniqueElementor Mega menu uses one ID for menu item and same ID for item Panel
Elementor need to fix in future update
 Certain ARIA roles must contain particular childrenElementor Mega menu creates on the fly aria roles.
Elementor need to fix in future update
 Interactive controls must not be nestedElementor Mega menu uses main menu item link to also shop drop down tab panel.
This is required usability, Elementor need to fix in future update
 Certain ARIA roles must contain particular childrenElementor Mega menu creates on the fly aria roles.
Elementor Mega menu creates on the fly aria roles.
Tab dropdown panelsInteractive controls must not be nestedElementor Mega menu creates on the fly aria roles.
Elementor Mega menu creates on the fly aria roles.

We will aim to have these updated by the Elementor Plugin Team. This will be constantly reviewed with the aim to have these items fixed by September 2023

Some of our PDFs may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. Some of these PDFs are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information about safeguarding and our services to prevent this issue. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, Role Value)
We will try to make sure any new PDFs we publish will meet accessibility standards, and where we find any that are not accessible, we will rectify this as soon as possible.

We will carry out an audit to assess the accessibility of our PDFs and plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages by September 2023.

We plan to audit PDFs on the website by September 2023.

We plan to train CMS users to add text content in the recommended way. We will review this by September 2023 and it will be an on-going process.

Disproportionate burden

We are not currently claiming that any accessibility problems would be a disproportionate burden to fix.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information about safeguarding and our services to prevent this issue. By the end of September 2023, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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 we publish will meet accessibility standards.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We plan to continually improve accessibility on this website. As well as periodical accessibility testing, our website editors will continue to be trained to publish content with accessibility regulations in mind. We have also added an accessibility toolbar for the benefit of the wider accessibility needs not covered by WCAG 2.1 AA standards e.g. negative contrast for dyslexic users.

Tools used on this site are regularly updated by various 3rd party developers. At any one time a new update might cause an accessibility issue within the code implemented. We will endeavor to report any new issues caused by updates from 3rd party development. 

We plan to carry out further testing on a regular basis.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 4th May 2023.

This website was last tested on 4th May 2023. The test was carried out by Happy Giraffe Group Limited.

We tested this with Google Chrome using Lighthouse browser Tool and the latest version of Axe-Core 4.7.0 provided as a browser addon by Deque.