Accessibility of website documents

Question

We have only recently agreed to publish agenda item reports on our website. (At last!) However, now our Clerk states it's too time consuming to make the changes needed to the reports, and he states it's impossible to display tables and graphs, if we are to be compliant with the Website Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.1AA. Does anyone else have this difficulty or know a suitable way around it?

Answer 1

The society of local council clerks SLCC may be able to help, but these website compliance standards are for visually or physical impaired people and if the charts are inserted as WCAG compliant images, with a link to an actual file I don't see what the problem is.

Comments

Cannot see any great problem here as it should be a matter of course for such documents to be converted to .pdf format and a simple link on the website to be made for viewing and printing or downloading by users. Too many PC 's are still using word ( or similar) to produce, store and distribute documents. Office and many other programmes now have the ability to easily and efficiently convert to .pdf format which was originated for ease and security of document storage and distribution

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Perhaps the clerk doesn't know how to do it or can't be bothered?  Word has been able to export to PDF since office 2010

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Graeme agreed but the efficiency of conversion up to 2020 was somewhat less than desirable down to Adobe frantically hanging onto their commercial edge. Always better to print to pdf file rather than save as pdf file as options are wider. Any graphs produced in excel can be printed to pdf as displayed with minimum of fuss and with high accuracy. Convert fonts to web based fonts as adobe does not see eye to eye with some Microsoft fonts.
Surely the clerk should have at least some expertise in modern technology including the requirements of the web site if there is no committee covering it?
Don't forget it was NALC who stated that the PC should have total control of their website.

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Totally agree with all you say above.

Answer 2

Tables shouldn't be too much of an issue, as long as WCAG is considered when they are created. Gov.uk is full of tables of information. Graphs and charts are more complex. How necessary are the graphs and how frequently do they appear?

Comments

Good point about how necessary they really are! Some clerks produce them to look impressive when they don't really add anything, e.g. Inserting  a pie chart with just two sectors to represent two numbers, e.g. percent of precept spent on admin and percent spent on all other items.

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Thank you all ! We already do have agenda items and reports in pdf form, but it seems that's not enough. The clerk says it takes all day just to put the agenda on the website in the correct format (whatever that actually means.) We're not told what the difficulty is (we rarely are). I will be fobbed off if I ask. As for graphs, we only get one regularly, an update on the previous one, and that certainly doesn't need to  be in graph form. The clerk hates it when you do your own research, hence my query on this forum as to what the issue really could be.

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If there is an issue with uploading documents to the website, the council should address it. A well-designed website should have a simple drag-and-drop interface or similar to upload pages. Ironically, WCAG 2.1 has made this easier, as the options of fancy page layouts have been removed. If you PM me the website address, I'll have a delve behind the scenes to see how it works.

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Not sure website design is a direct function of the content management system but yes the CMS should be simple to use with a drag and drop GUI. I wonder if BromsQuery's clerk is using some old legacy FTP system?

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Thank you Dave. I will make contact on Monday. And many thanks to all who've replied.

Answer 3

The answer is - yes.  Many councillors can pop stuff on the website quite easily, but the clerk has to do it, and finds it a real chore.  However, you are lucky that you  have a clerk who can create charts and graphs, if only in paper form.

Comments

If the Clerk finds it a chore, perhaps you should consider resoving the situation through training or better software.

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Yes, I think it will be ultimately resolved that way.