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Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to the website, Connecting County Durham

This website is run by the Durham County Council, hereby known as Durham. 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 using browser or device settings;
  • Zoom in up to 400% without the text spilling off the screen;
  • Navigate most of the website using a keyboard or 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. 

This website is designed to be compliant with the international standard Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (WCAG) – Level AA. 

How Accessible is this Website?

We are aware that there are many parts of this website that are not fully accessible :-

  • This website uses JavaScript to deliver certain features. Please make sure you have JavaScript turned on within your browser to deliver full features;
  • Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software;
  • Live video streams do not have captions;

Using this Website

Accessible Features

This website uses a widget that contains several Accessible features that can be used by users with specific requirements. The widget is available on the top right-hand side of the header menu.

These features include: -

Translation

You can use the Google Translate feature at the top right of the screen to translate the text to any of the available languages, including common community languages in London such as Ukrainian, Bengali, Chinese, and Somali.  Please note that the translation is done automatically by the Google software, not by Durham.


Contrast & Font Size

Changing the contrast and font sizes of text can increase legibility for some users.

The “default colour scheme” which was decided as the branding colour schema for this website. It has been discovered that this schema does not satisfy current accessibility standards. Therefore, this website also contains a “high contrast scheme” which satisfies all accessibility standards for colour contrast.

Accessible Alternatives

Efforts have been made to create accessible alternatives for content that does not meet standards where possible.

Where appropriate we may be able to deliver content to users in accordance with their needs.

Please see “Make a request for Accessible Content” section for further details.

Make a request for Accessible Content

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille; Please email us on [xxx].

Purpose of Links

We will use links to navigate to content on the website. External links will open in a new window.

Where possible the action of an external link will be described by extra description within the link text, so all users can understand the link’s purpose.  However, in certain areas of the website adding this extra description will become a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations.

We have provided the following definition for external links: -

External Links will be used for any content that has known limitations with assistive technologies OR navigates a user away from secure platforms. In summary, this means the following items are considered External links –

  1. Non-HTML Documentation (See “Issues with PDFs and other documents”)
  2. Redirection away from secure platforms
  3. External websites that are not part of the council.

Feedback and contact information

If you find any problems that are not listed within this statement, or believe we are not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations please contact us.

Enforcement Procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Services (EASS)

Technical Information about this Website’s Accessibility

Durham County 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 2.2 (WCAG) AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed in the following section, “Non-Accessible Content”.

Non-Accessible Content

This chapter lists issues that fail the current accessibility regulations. The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

This sub-section lists issues that fail the current accessibility regulations.

Issues with PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be marked up to be accessible for a screen reader.

We are currently updating our PDFs into accessible webpages 

The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

Issues with images, video and audio

Live video streams have captions auto added by YouTube, not all videos are currently checked for the accuracy of their captioning.

Certain images do not have descriptive enough alternative text. We are reviewing all images that are used to describe essential content to the user, for example the County Durham Logo.

Resolutions of Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Since this statement was last updated the following accessibility issues have been resolved.

Disproportionate Burden

There are no issues that are considered a disproportionate burden.

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Web Content that is not subject to the standards referenced in this policy statement are as follows: -

  1. Content that is archived.
  2. Content on intranets and extranets published before 23/09/2019
  3. Non-HTML Documentation (PDFs, Microsoft Office files) that were published before 23/09/2018.
  4.  Non-HTML Documentation (PDFs, Microsoft Office files) that are not essential to the services Durham provide.
  5. Live Audio and Video
  6. Pre-recorded Audio and Video published before 23/09/2020
  7. Online Maps and mapping services
  8. Third Party Content that is not under direct control of Durham or main website provider – Google Translate, Social Media links

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 26 August 2025. It will be reviewed every year in accordance with the regulations.  

To prepare this statement an accessibility test was carried out by People Places Lives QA Team. The most viewed pages were tested using automated testing tools by our website team. A further audit of the website was carried out to the WCAG 2.2 AA standard.