This accessibility statement applies to www.reading.gov.uk.
This website is run by Reading Borough Council.
We want the website to be accessible, inclusive and user-friendly. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
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.
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. You can see a list of any issues we currently know about in the non-accessible section of this statement.
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.
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, contact the Digital and Website Manager by email at web.team@reading.gov.uk.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing accessibility regulations. If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
We provide a text relay service for people who are D/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.
Reading Borough Council is committed to making its website accessible, in line with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Many of our old PDFs, Word and Excel documents do not meet accessibility standards. This is normally because they are not structured in a way that makes them accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1
Accessibility guidelines do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services.
We will not be able to replace all the old documents with accessible alternatives, but we are in the process of reviewing which documents are essential to providing our services. This work was meant to have been completed in April 2023, but has run over into July. We have found 2,359 documents that need to be reviewed. In the review we need to assess how often the documents are accessed and how easy it will be to either replace them with HTML pages, accessible PDFs or online forms. We intend to do this work throughout 2023/2024.
Embedded videos may not have BSL, audio description, captions or transcripts. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.2.4, 1.2.5, 1.2.6 or 1.2.7.
Videos will be reviewed in August 2023 and either removed or made to comply with WCAG 2.1.
This statement was prepared on 8 November 2021 and reviewed on 18 October 2023.
This website was last tested on 2 October 2023. The test is automated and was carried out by Silktide. They tested 125 web pages, following a methodology they use to test nearly all council websites. We got a score of 91%.