Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to www.dacorum.gov.uk. It does not apply to content on other subdomains - for example the ModernGov site (democracy.dacorum.gov.uk), which publishes council agendas, minutes, and councillor and meeting information.

This website is run by Dacorum Borough Council. 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 per cent 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 use content performance platform Siteimprove to monitor the accessibility of our website. As of May 2025, we had an accessibility score of 90.8 out of 100 against a Government industry benchmark of 87.7. However, we know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. For example:

• many of our PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• there are colour contrast issues on our recruitment pages
• our homepage does not have a heading 1

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format, such as accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email webteam@dacorum.gov.uk. We’ll consider your request and get back to you within five working days.

Alternatively, use the link at the bottom of each page to "Provide feedback on this page".

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 webteam@dacorum.gov.uk. Let us know the web address (URL) of the page and a description of the problem.

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

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

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

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Dacorum Borough 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 listed below:

Non-accessible content

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

PDF documents

• Many of our PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. As of 19 May 2025, we are aware of 589 PDF documents that have been published on our site since 23 September 2018 - when the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations came into force - that have accessibility issues. PDF issues include not being structured correctly (WCAG 4.1.2), missing headings (WCAG 2.4.10) and missing text alternatives (WCAG 1.1).
• By 31 May 2026, we plan to either fix any PDF documents (published after 23 September 2018) that have been downloaded more than 100 times in the past 90 days (19 February to 19 May 2025) or replace them with HTML pages. We will strive to meet accessibility standards on any new PDF documents we publish. 

Disproportionate burden

PDFs and other documents on this site

We are aware that there are documents on this site that are not accessible. We aim to work through any PDF documents that were downloaded more than 100 times in the past 90 days (19 February to 19 May 2025), to make them accessible or convert them to HTML content. We consider that making the rest of the PDFs and documents on the site accessible, with minimal evidence of demand, to be a disproportionate burden on the Council.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs

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. 

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What are we doing to improve accessibility

To improve accessibility we:

• monitor new content to make sure it meets the standards before it is published
• review existing pages when making updates to ensure they are compliant
• where possible publish information as web pages rather than PDF documents
• if we do publish PDF documents then these will be checked using Word and Adobe Acrobat Pro's accessibility checkers, as well as carrying out manual checks for issues such as colour contrast
• provide guidance and training to teams within the council on creating accessible content and documents.
• The www.dacorum.gov.uk website is fully tested against A, AA, AAA, ARIA authoring, and accessibility best practices every five days. The tests are carried out by Siteimprove.
  

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 19 May 2025. It was last reviewed and updated on 23 September 2022.

Our current estimate is that all accessibility fixes will be completed by 31 May 2026.