This accessibility statement applies to the West of England Combined Authority, Growth Hub, Invest Bristol and Bath, and Career Search domains.
This website is run by the West of England Combined Authority. 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 our main website and its associated domains are not fully accessible:
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:
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: comms@westofengland-ca.gov.uk to speak with someone from our Communication and Marketing teams
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).
Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person
If you would like to contact us by phone, please use the following number: 0117 428 6210
For further details on how to contact us, please use our contact page.
The West of England Combined Authority is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
The West of England Combined Authority and its associated websites are partially compliant.
Our websites are 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:
When first visiting any main or Growth Hub page when the browser is zoomed to 400% the cookies banner that usually goes across the bottom of the screen takes over the entire viewport and is also partially cut off. This fails on WCAG 1.4.10 Reflow. We have raised this with the third-party service Civic Cookie who look to address this in future releases.
On the Growth Hub pages at 400% zoom the header, cookies icon and live chat icon take up a lot of space in the viewport. As a result, the cookies and live chat icons cover some content meaning it cannot be fully read. This fails on WCAG 1.4.10 Reflow. This has been raised as an issue with the providers who are looking to resolve it in a future release.
Not all of our videos have an audio description for important information like actions, scene changes or on-screen text. This fails on WCAG 1.2.5 Audio Description (prerecorded). We will add audio description for all our videos by September 2023.
When using a screen reader for the Transport Delivery PDF, the reading order is not accurate, with prior page content being read at the end of the document. This fails on WCAG 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence. The designer of the PDF is reviewing and will rectify by the end of March 2023.
The following issues are being reviewed by our website developer, JBi. They aim to resolve them by the end of March 2023:
The filter checkboxes on the Search page are individually labelled but do not appear to be associated with the overall main label of ‘Type’ meaning that context is lost for users of assistive technology. When viewing these checkboxes with a screen reader they show ‘unlabelled’ where it would be expected that ‘Type’ would be displayed. This fails on WCAG 1.3.1 Info and relationships.
In the filter section of the Latest News page the checkboxes are individually labelled but do not appear to be associated with their overall main visual label. When viewing these checkboxes with a screen reader they show ‘unlabelled’ where it would be expected that 'Category', 'Published date' and 'Tags' would be displayed. This fails on WCAG 1.3.1 Info and relationships.
On the Future Bright page the 'Your Council Area' select box is programmatically made of two inputs, one of which is not associated with the visual label. This fails on WCAG 1.3.1 Info and relationships. The 'Your Council Area' element also does not appear to have an accessible name. This fails on WCAG 4.1.2 Name, role, value.
In the cookies menu that can be expanded from the bottom left corner of all main pages there is a toggle switch for 'Analytical Cookies'. The text 'Off' does not have sufficient contrast against the background. This fails on WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum).
In the cookies menu that can be expanded from the bottom left corner of all Growth Hub pages there are two places where the minimum contrast ratio is not met:
This fails on WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum).
On the Growth Hub pages, the pink ‘Accept’ button in the initial cookies banner that appears when you first visit any page does not have sufficient contrast with the text. This fails on WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum).
On the main and Growth Hub pages menu items in the header receive a coloured underline on hover. When text is resized, this coloured line strikes out the text making it more difficult to read. This fails on WCAG 1.4.12 Text Spacing.
The page title of the Newsletter Sign-up form is 'Thank you' which is not descriptive of the form. The page title remains the same when the content changes after the form is submitted. Whilst the content on this page is primarily the same as the title, it also lacks context which makes it less meaningful. This fails on WCAG 2.4.2 Page Titled.
Above the carousels on the DETI and Careers pages there are numbers that show which slide is displayed. When the slides are moved, the number updates. This status message is not announced to users of assistive technology. This fails on WCAG 4.1.3 Status Messages.
When the filters on Search, Latest News and Growth Hub Events pages are used to narrow results, the text at the bottom of the results, above the pagination, is updated to reflect how many items are being displayed and the number of items applicable to that search. This status message is not announced for users of assistive technology. This fails on WCAG 4.1.3 Status Messages.
On the Search page when an invalid search term is entered into the search field on the page an error message appears beneath the input, but attention is not drawn to this for assistive technology users. This issue occurs on this page only when an incorrect search term is entered into the search bar that can be accessed via the header. This fails on WCAG 4.1.3 Status Messages.
The following issues are created by our live chat functionality which we are unable to amend internally. We have raised them with the third-party service provider who will look to amend them in future releases:
The following issues are created by our use of Dotdigital which we are unable to amend internally. We have raised them with the third-party service provider who will look to amend them in future releases:
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. By September 2023, we plan to have all the key PDF and Word documents fully accessible.
The accessibility regulations do not 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.
We have developed an accessibility management plan which features the next steps in our efforts to improve our websites accessibility.
The immediate steps we are taking to improve accessibility are as follows:
Following this we have set out a longer-term plan which sets out plans for further audits, internal training and other methods for improving the organisations accessibility standards.
This statement was prepared on 22/11/22. It was last reviewed on 07/02/23.
This website was last tested on 6/09/22. The test was carried out by the government’s digital cabinet office.
Their approach to testing included taking a sample of webpages across our domains.