Accessibility

Accessibility statement for River Thames Scheme

This website is run by Surrey County Council in partnership with the Environment Agency. We are committed to providing an accessible website that is easy to use by anyone, whatever their age, background, access device or level of ability/disability.

For example, that means you should be able to:

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• zoom in up to 300% 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.

We have designed this website with features that make it easier to use by everyone, including those with visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, or neurological disabilities. We aim to reach the level "AA" of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These are the international standard for accessible websites and content.

How accessible is this website?

We know that some parts of this website are not yet fully accessible. We will continue to work to ensure that all of our website functions work well when used with access devices such as screen readers, braille readers, smart phones and other devices. View the list of supported Internet browsers.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

Whilst all aspects of this website have been carefully designed to comply with international accessibility guidelines, there are many companies and people that maintain pages on the website, so there may be some elements that do not conform to all the guidelines. If you have any problems accessing our website or part of it, then please contact Web and Digital Services.

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).

Technical information about this website's accessibility

We are committed to making this 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 (WCAG) version 2.2 AA standard.

Non accessible content

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

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

In line with other Surrey County Council sites, documents are checked with an automated test before being published on the site. This eliminates many common accessibility errors but does not guarantee that documents will be fully accessible.

Some PDFs and documents may not meet accessibility standards. For example, they may not be structured so they're accessible to a screen reader. This would fail WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

We manually check and fix:

• the most-viewed documents.
• documents that are essential for using our services.
• documents intended for audiences likely to have accessibility needs.

These documents should be fully accessible.

We have provided Portable Document Format (PDF) files of the Preliminary Environmental Information Report (PEIR). The PEIR consists of 4 volumes, each comprising of multiple files. We have made efforts to make these documents accessible where practicable, however, some may not meet all WCAG 2.2 criteria.

All PEIR files have been tested for accessibility using an automated tool and have passed with the exception of the following items.

• Most aspects of Volume 1 (Non-Technical Summary) have passed our checks for accessibility. However this document contains two figures (maps) that are exempt from the accessibility regulations (see below).
• Volume 3 (Figures) consists of a series of maps. These have not been tested as the are considered exempt from the regulations.
• Volume 4 (Appendices) consists of a number of different reports and documents. These have been tested for accessibility and passed with the exception of the following:
  • Eight of the appendices contain figures (maps) that are considered exempt from the accessibility requirements.
  • Six of the appendices (appendices 9.1 to 9.6) are complex reports in their own right that were originally produced by third parties without accessibility requirements in mind. We have made efforts to improve the accessibility of these but you may encounter some reduced functionality if using assistive technology. For example, some of these appendices have not been saved with tags for accessibility, heading structures and styles may be incorrect, tables may not read in a logical order and alt text may be missing. We have assessed the impact of not making these appendices accessible. These appendices provide supplementary information to the main PEIR documents (Volumes 1 to 3), but they are not fundamental to the understanding of the assessment and therefore the specialist and technical detail contained within them is likely to have a limited audience. We have therefore made the decision not to further resolve remaining issues at this time.

If you are unable to read a document on our site, please contact Web and Digital Services and we will help you.

See Surrey County Council's disproportionate burden statement for further details.

Disproportionate burden

Disproportionate burden does not apply to this website other than as stated above.

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

Maps

Maps are excluded from the accessibility regulations as long as any essential navigational information they provide is available.

How we test this website

We test this website using the automated SiteImprove Accessibility Checker. We test pdfs and documents using an in-house automated tool.

We carry out manual checks on a proportion of our pages and documents to identify issues that can't be detected automatically.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We are continuing to review how we develop the site to make sure that any new functionality is accessible.

This statement was prepared on 4 November 2021. It was last updated on 18 January 2024.