Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to midlothian.gov.uk.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you can:

change colours, contrast levels and fonts
zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
navigate the website using just a keyboard
navigate the website using speech recognition software
listen to the website using the screen reader provided (ReachDeck instructions)
listen to the website using your own screen reader (including recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)
request documents in different file formats.

Readability

We have made every effort to ensure this web site is easily readable using 'plain english'. All our publishers attend training to present content in an easy to read format.

British Sign Language (BSL) users

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. (Newly published PDFs are checked for accessibility, and corrected where needed.)
Some of the code is not fully compliant with recent web standards (e.g. some aria-label attributes are missing. This may not affect your practical experience of using the site.)
Some third party components embedded in the pages contain some code that is not fully AAA compliant. (This may not affect your practical experience of using the site.) These include:
- Google Captcha widgets that confirm you are a human
- The ReachDeck screen reader.
- Maps from Google and Esri.
The 404 Not Found error page may scroll sideways on small screens.

The page code on our own domain (i.e. that is under our control) will be made fully compliant in the next website iteration, due for review in March 2025.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find a problem not listed on this page, or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact the Communications and Marketing team:

communications@midlothian.gov.uk

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) enforces 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 any complaints, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

We provide a text relay service for people who are hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.

Our offices have audio induction loops, or we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter if you contact us before your visit.

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Midlothian 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.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Errors:

A 1.3.1 Info and Relationships: Label is not connected to a form control

Warnings:

A 1.3.1 Info and Relationships: Content not included in landmarks
A 3.3.1 Error Identification: Aria-atomic="true" missing on error container
A 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value: Redundant WAI-ARIA attribute

These issues are with template code in the website, and are present in all the content pages. In practice they may not affect your experience of using the website.

We plan to fix them in the next iteration of the website, due for review in March 2025.

Partner websites

Websites branded as Midlothian Council, but hosted separately on our suppliers' own platforms, may not be fully accessible. Read the accessibility statements for these 3rd party websites.

Our microsite Health & Social Care Partnership does not have a language declaration in the HTML code. In automatically generated pages, icons indicating downloadable file types do not have alt text. These may need a third party software update to address.

Some of the interactive forms on partner websites are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. These forms are built and hosted elsewhere and are ‘skinned’ to look like our website.

We will assess them again when supplier contracts are up for renewal.

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 forms published as PDFs and Word documents. We plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages. The download pages allow the user to request the document in a different format.

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 historical annual or quarterly financial reports.

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.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We use quality assurance software that scans the website every 5 days. Among other things, it flags accessibility issues with new content, such as inappropriate text formatting and misleading link wording. We fix these issues as they occur.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 19 August 2020. It was last reviewed on 12 March 2024.

This website is scanned for accessibility issues every 5 days by SiteImprove.