Accessibility Statement

(This statement was last updated on 19th November 2020.)

General Policy and Compliance

Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually trying to improve the browsing experience for everyone, and aim at full compliance with relevant accessibility standards. CnES Web is currently partially compliant. This means that some parts of our site do not fully comply with accessibility standards.

AbilityNet (Opens in a new window or downloads a file) has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

Non-Compliant Content

A few parts of this website are non-complaint:

some PDF and MS Word documents are not fully accessible
some tables spill off the screen and/or do not support an appropriate reading sequence
some audio and video streams are neither captioned nor accompanied by a transcript

If You Cannot Access Parts of the Website

Should you have any problems or concerns relating to the accessibility of the CnES website that are not listed on this page, please Contact Us.

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 are not happy with how we deal with any concerns you may have in relation to accessibility, pleas contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) (Opens in a new window or downloads a file).

Technical Information

Comhairle nan Eilean Siar is committed to making its website accessible in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (Opens in a new window or downloads a file). We aim at fully supporting WCAG (Opens in a new window or downloads a file) (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) set out by the W3C (Opens in a new window or downloads a file) (World Wide Web Consortium). These guidelines aim at ensuring websites are accessible by all users including those with disabilities.

This website is partially compliant with the WCAG (Opens in a new window or downloads a file) AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non Accessible Content

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

PDFs and Other Documents

Some of our older PDF and MS Word documents do not meet accessibility standards. (They fail WCAG 2.1 success criteria listed under Guidelines 2.4 – Navigable and/or 1.1.1 Non-text Content.) Other than those subject to exemption (see below), we aim to either update the documents or replace them with accessible HTML pages by September 2022.

Tables

Some tables require both vertical and horizontal scrolling (They fail WCAG 2.1 success criterion Guideline 1.4.10 - Reflow) and may not support an appropriate reading sequence (They fail WCAG 2.1 success criterion Guideline 1.3.2 - Meaningful Sequence.) We aim to either update, replace or provide an alternative presentation of the data by September 2022.

Audio / Video

Some audio and video streams are neither captioned nor accompanied by a transcript (They fail WCAG 2.1 success criteria listed under Guideline 1.2 – Time-based Media). Other than those subject to exemption (see below), we aim to remove non-compliant content or provide appropriate transcripts for all audio content by September 2022.

Content Not Within the Scope of the Accessibility Regulations

The following content is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations (Opens in a new window or downloads a file).

PDFs and Other Documents

The accessibility regulations do not require us to address issues with office file formats, such as Adobe PDF or Microsoft Office documents, published before 23 September 2018. This does not apply to documents that are essential to providing our services, e.g., we do aim at replacing any active office file format forms that do not currently meet accessibility requirements.

Documents Supplied by Third Parties

In some cases, we are obliged to publish original documents provided by third parties. The content and format of these documents is outwith our control. For example, documents supplied in support of certain applications.

Archive Content

We maintain an archive of old committee agendas and reports, predominantly based on PDF documents that may not meet accessibility guidelines. We also maintain an archive of committee audio files that are not accompanied by a transcription. We do not plan to update these elements where they were created or edited before 23rd September 2019 as they are exempt.

Live Audio and Video Streams

Live committee audio and video streams are not captioned. (This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 Captions (Live)). We do not plan to add captions to the live audio or video stream as this is exempt.

Mapping

We serve both static and dynamic maps within some of our pages and via our Address Checker application. As presented, this functionality is exempt.

Heritage Collections

We host some heritage content, manuscripts and maps, that can not be readily presented in an accessible format. We do not plan to update these elements as they are exempt.

Payments Portal

Our payments portal is a third-party hosted system. Some of this content is not fully accessible. This application is neither funded nor developed by us, and is not under our control. As such, it is exempt.

Accessibility Testing

This website is regularly tested by Sitemorse (Opens in a new window or downloads a file) : randomised weekly and monthly samples of website content are tested for accessibility. Content editors carry out both manual and automated accessibility tests against all new content added to the site.