Guidance

Accessibility statement for the appeals casework portal

This accessibility statement applies to content published on the acp.planninginspectorate.gov.uk domain.

Applies to England

The website is run by the Planning Inspectorate. We want as many people as possible to be able to use the website. You should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • 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)

How accessible the website is

Some parts of the website are not fully accessible:

  • the text will not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window above 200%
  • there are areas of text missing labels
  • some validation is missing
  • the compliance status section below gives more detail on the areas of the site that are not fully accessible.

Feedback and contact information

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

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.

If you cannot view the map on our Contact page, call us on 0303 444 5000 or email us at [email protected] for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with the website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of the website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please email us at [email protected]

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 the website’s accessibility

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

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

The site is not responsive to changes in browser window size or zoom level above 200% and two-dimensional scrolling is required to view content beyond 200%zoom. It’s expected that at zoom up to 400%, no parts of the content should require two-dimensional scrolling except for parts of content where two-dimensional scrolling is required for usage or meaning. This fails WCAG 2.1 1.4.10 (Reflow) success criterion. To achieve a level above 200% a complete site rebuild will be required, due to the limited time remaining before the site is replaced it is not practical to fix this. Not all page regions are identified with ARIA Landmarks. We plan to fix this by April 2021.

Some HTML validation errors have been identified. We plan to fix this by April 2021.

Some mandatory form fields do not show a text error. We plan to fix this by April 2021.

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

Some of our older documents don’t meet accessibility standards. For example, they:

  • are not structured properly – this does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2

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 documents that we author and publish will meet the accessibility standards.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

The previous audit of the site identified 37 issues with the structure of the site and the HTML content. We have managed to resolve 31 of these and plan to deal with 6 of the remaining ones by the end of April 2021. The remaining issue is partially compliant and will not be fixed in the lifespan of this site due to the workload required.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 25th February 2021. It was last reviewed on 25th February 2021.

This website was last tested on 10th February 2021. The test was carried out by Zoonou.

We used an extensive structured sample of the site covering all the main templates.

Updates to this page

Published 15 September 2020
Last updated 26 February 2021 + show all updates
  1. Statement updated following testing carried out by Zoonou

  2. A rewrite of the statement to reflect the current accessibility of the site and the further changes planned.

  3. First published.

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