Website Accessibility Statement
North of Tyne Combined Authority is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (external website) (‘the Accessibility Regulations’)
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.
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
(a) Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
Documents
Not all our documents are fully accessible.
Our more recent documents are mostly or partially compliant. Our focus is on meeting these core areas:
Some PDFS are not fully accessible, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content) and WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.5 (Multiple Ways).
For inaccessible PDFs, we ask content authors to provide a basic plain-text alternative, preferably in Open Document (ODT) or Microsoft Word format.
Inaccessible aspects of some of our documents include:
Where documents are not in the format that you need, you can request an alternative by emailing our enquiries team.
We plan to add text alternatives for all images and bookmarks to PDFs by September 2023. When we add new PDFs, we’ll make sure they meet accessibility standards.
iFrames
Some iFrames are missing the ‘title’ attribute. This may make it difficult for people to know what content is contained in the iFrame before you interact with it, especially when using a screen reader.
Some iFrames have a title attribute but not a very meaningful one, for example title=“blank”.
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks, and 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.
Images
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 plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2023. When we publish new content, we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.
Interactive tools, data visualisations and transactions
We sometimes publish and link to visual data using platforms such as PowerBi This information is hosted on an external website and we make our information as accessible as the platform allows.
We are aware that the PowerBi dashboards have multiple accessibility issues and are partially compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA.
We are committed to ensuring that all NTCA dashboards are as accessible as possible. The NTCA Research Team is reviewing the issues, to identify an agreed approach and timeline to improve accessibility. This will be implemented in line with the update cycle for the dashboards.
Links
Not all links use meaningful link text and/or specify whether the link goes to an external website or opens a new tab or window. This may make it difficult for people to know where a link is going to and could open a new tab or window without you knowing before you click it.
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text content, 2.4.4 Link purpose and 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.
Video
The accessibility of embedded video content is dependent on the standards reached by the third-party provider, for example YouTube. Where possible we make use of features such as subtitles, transcripts and captions to ensure our content is accessible.
Some of our older videos that are within scope of the guidelines do not have subtitles, however our more recent ones do.
Some of our videos have subtitles that have been automatically generated and have not been reviewed by a human, which can lead to some errors in translation.
Some of our videos have meaningful visual content (e.g. animated text), but no audio track, description or transcript. Some of our videos have meaningful audio content (e.g. music or sound effects), but no captions.
This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.1 Audio only and video only (prerecorded), 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded), 1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded), and 1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded).
3
The annual statement of accounts documents are not accessible and a claim of disproportionate burden is in place. The annual statement contains around ***tables that have been placed as images and are so not accessible. Other changes relating to alt-text, reformatting e.g. font, spacing have been actioned and are accessible.
(c) The content is not within the scope of 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’re not essential to providing our services.
Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
Live video
We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.
Visual Map
The Visual Map for our projects is not keyboard accessible. There is a sidebar (text alternative) which allows searching and navigation capabilities reflecting the same functionality as the map. The Map is a visual way to show the locations, these are listed in the sidebar.
The accessibility regulations do not require maps to be accessible if essential information is provided.
This statement was prepared on 11 September 2023; it was last reviewed on 11 September 2023.
This website was last tested in October 2022 The test was carried out by our website provider and the tools used were:
We used this approach to deciding on a sample of pages to test https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/doing-a-basic-accessibility-check-if-you-cant-do-a-detailed-one