Accessibility statement

Accessibility statement for Livewell Southend

This accessibility statement applies to www.livewellsouthend.com

This website is run by Southend-on-Sea City Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • 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)

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

How accessible this website is

We have upgraded this website to an improved platform that has been designed with accessibility in mind.

We have systematically gone through the content on this website, and continue to do so, to ensure text is in plain English, free from jargon and of a reading level lower than secondary education (WCAG 3.1.5). The majority of this website complies with this, however some documents and pages within the SEND Local Offer section do not meet this criteria.

All buttons, images and banners have colour contrast that adheres to the accessibility regulations.

If any videos are uploaded directly to the site, we will ensure these have captions and/or a transcript.

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

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:

We will consider your request and get back to you within 5 working days.

If you cannot view the map on our contact us page, call or email us livewell@southend.gov.uk for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: livewell@southend.gov.uk

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 respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us

Please email livewell@southend.gov.uk

Technical information about this websites accessibility

Southend-on-Sea City 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 exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

  • contrast levels are set and not able to be altered. However in re-designing this website, we have ensured that all navigation and body content has colour contrast compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA success criterion 1.4.3 contrast (minimum).
  • many of our pdf downloads are not accessible. We have reduced the pdfs on the site and continue to reduce these, placing all necessary content on web pages where appropriate. Many documents in the SEND Local Offer section are not accessible and contain legal wording that does not comply to accessibility requirements. 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 council policies. We plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

Non-compliant documents include examples in the following areas:

Documents being non-compliant does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

Livewell Southend also hosts a number of directory entries, for local health and wellbeing services. These were imported as text from the previous iteration of the site and due to the amount of directory entries, are not currently all accessible. We plan to work through all of the directory entries in time and ensure that they meet accessibility requirements. We aim to have this completed by September 2024.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some text is written in language that is not plain English. We are reviewing all content.

Content that is 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 are not essential to providing our services.

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

What we are doing to improve accessibility

We have already relaunched the website on to an improved and accessible platform.

The roadmap to becoming fully accessible is as follows

  • ensuring body copy of web pages are in plain English
  • ensuring new pdfs created after September 2020 are accessible
  • ensuring new videos have subtitles

With this version of the site, which went live in June 2023, a process is in place where any content that is created on the site by anyone other than the Digital Communications Team at Southend-on-Sea City Council must be approved by the Online IAG Support Officer (who manages the site), before the content is published. In the absence of the Online IAG Support Officer, a Digital Communications Officer or the Digital Communications Team Manager is also able to approve any content for publication.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 14 June 2023 and was last reviewed on 30th April 2024.

In building the new iteration of the website, which went live on 21st June 2023, the Digital Communications Team at Southend-on-Sea City Council, which includes the Online IAG Support Officer who manages the site, amended each content page to ensure accessibility. The new site’s sitemap, structure and content were built from scratch, so the accessibility of each content page was manually checked in the build phase. The team also provided digital accessibility training to other backend users of the site, such as the SEND team, in an attempt to ensure compliance with WCAG 2.1 regulations.

In March 2024, a newly created role, Digital Content and Accessibility Advisor, came into effect in the Digital Communications Team at Southend-on-Sea City Council. The Digital Content and Accessibility Advisor will be undertaking high-level manual accessibility checks of the Livewell sites content going forward, on an annual basis.

This site has not had a formal external accessibility audit, however in March of 2024, the subject of an external audit was broached with the Director of Public Health at Southend-on-Sea City Council, who funds the website. The Director of Public Health has noted the recommendation that a full external accessibility check would be beneficial to ensuring compliance with WCAG 2.2, which is recommended to be in place by October 2024.