Accessibilty Statement for Hereford, Ludlow and North Shropshire College
This accessibility statement applies to the website for Hereford, Ludlow and North Shropshire College (hlnsc.ac.uk)
This website is run by Hereford, Ludlow, and North Shropshire 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:
most older 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.
Feedback and contact information
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 21 days.
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 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 email at enquiries@hlcollege.ac.uk
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Hereford, Ludlow and North Shropshire College team are 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
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
Navigation
The main navigation tab order specified by tabindex attributes does not follow a logical order. We will aim to find a fix by June 2025.
Dropdown menus are not easy to access using the keyboard. Main navigation sub menu below the depth level of 1 are not accessible. No mega menu instances currently available allow for full accessibility. This fails WCAG 2.1.1 Keyboard. We are currently trying to redevlope this main navigation and will aim to find a fix by June 2025.
Images and Graphics
Some decorative elements, UI and graphics components do not have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 against adjacent color(s). We will aim to to find a fix by June 2025.
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 will aim to find a fix by June 2025.
We plan to add text alternatives for all images by June 2025. When we publish new content, we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.
Some page elements fail WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast. We plan to make all elements have sufficient colour contrast by June 2025.
Text and content
We cannot guarantee users will be able to modify the line height or spacing of text in some places on the site. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.12 (Text Spacing).
There maybe some occurrences of badly formatted links with text that is not descriptive enough, e.g. Learn more, rather than the purpose of the link being clear just by the link text alone. This would fail WCAG success criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose (In Context)). We are currently working to eliminate these link issues ongoing with content management editors, with a view to reviewing them in June 2025.
We plan to train CMS users to add text content and heading heirachy in the recommended way. We will review on an on-going process.
On Screen animation
On some of our pages we use a animated hexagon shape that floats subltly in the background. There is no way to stop this from moving. This fails WCAG 2.2.2 Pause. We plan to review this design feature by June 2025. We will decide wether to keep it with pause option or remove it completely.
Pdf documents
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). We plan to audit PDFs on the website by June 2025.
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 June 2025.
Code markup
Certain ARIA roles must contain particular children. This is an inherent issue with Elementor and its widgets. As these are controlled by external developer changes and enhancements, these will be updated as and when new plugin releases are updated on this site. At any one point this may not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, Role Value). This is currently not an issue in the latest audit but will be reviewed by June 2025.
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 and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. 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. For example, we do not plan to fix [example of non-essential document].
Any new PDFs or Word documents 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.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was first prepared on 28th April 2023. It was last reviewed on 12th June 2024.
This website was last tested in June 2024. The test/audit was carried out by Happy Giraffe Group Limited.
Our approach to deciding on a sample of pages to test was to check all publicly published pages on this website.
We tested this with Google Chrome using the latest version of Axe-Core 4.6.2 provided as a browser addon by Deque.
We plan to carry out further manual testing on a regular basis.
