Accessibility statement

This website is run by Thanet District Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

• 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)

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible:

• most older PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

Email: digital.team@thanet.gov.uk

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within seven working days.

If you can’t view the map on our ‘Get in Touch’ page, call customer services on 01843 577000 for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: digital.team@thanet.gov.uk

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

Thanet District Council is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Disproportionate burden

Some of our online services are hosted by third-party suppliers and you may find navigating these services difficult depending on their level of web accessibility. These include but not restricted to planning.thanet.gov.uk, democracy.thanet.gov.uk

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues and we believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contracts are up for renewal.

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2.

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2021, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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. 

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 19 August 2019 and was carried out by LUV Group on 19 August 2019.

We tested:

Our main website platform, available at https://www.thanet.gov.uk

You can read the full accessibility test report.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We have a plan in place and are working to fix these issues.

We are working with our suppliers to fix all the issues listed here as is stated in contracts we hold with them.

We are also working with all our staff who are responsible for content on the website, to train them in producing more accessible content and to improve all the content already up on the site that has issues.

If you would like more detailed information on our assessments, or a more detailed look at the steps we are taking to fix a particular issue please contact us.

This statement was prepared on September 2019. It was last updated May 2021.

We will review and update this statement by May 2022