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Our commitment to making our site as accessible to all and how to report issues.
This accessibility statement applies to Waltham Forest Council's main website and My Account, our online service portal.
It does not apply to content on walthamforest.gov.uk subdomains (for example: builtenvironment.walthamforest.gov.uk, eclaim.walthamforest.gov.uk).
This website is run by the London Borough of Waltham Forest. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. 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.
If you need information on this website in a different format email web.site@walthamforest.gov.uk
We will aim to get back to you within 21 working days.
If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, email web.site@walthamforest.gov.uk.
The site is regularly checked for accessibility issues as set out in to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.
We do by:
The London Borough of Waltham Forest is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance 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 issues listed below.
Some of the videos on our website are subtitled and have transcriptions. Work needs to be done with Council services that produce videos to make sure they produce accessible videos as a matter of course.
Our main online processes are built and hosted using Granicus’ GovService. Our forms have a number of issues:
Our internal developers are working to fix these issues.
Our current web chat tool does not indicate when it has the focus for keyboard users.
This issue will be addressed in early 2022 when we change the web chat tool to a different provider.
Our website currently has issues with:
These issues cause particular problems for people who use the keyboard or by text-to-speech software to navigate our site.
We aim to address these by:
There is an interactive virtual tour on the site that may not be fully accessible. Further work is to be done with the service to establish it's accessibility.
Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards. And some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services.
We have removed approximately 1,800 documents from the website and are working on the rest to either:
We understand that the 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.
However, if you need information in an alternative format, email web.site@walthamforest.gov.uk.
We launched a new version of this website in November 2021 that has improved accessibility over our previous site.
With the new site we are also:
We will also continue to monitor accessibility using automated and manual checks.
And we are working with Council services and external suppliers to improve accessibility of our main website and our other online services.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
This statement was originally prepared in February 2020 and reviewed and updated in January 2022.
The website was last checked for accessibility issues in October and December 2021.