Accessibility Statement

Measures to support accessibility

Visit County Durham are committed to making our website as accessible as possible for all our website visitors, including those with disabilities. We are taking measures to ensure that all web content conforming to standard WCAG 2.1 AA and should meet AAA as feasible.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standard defines requirements to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. "Fully conforms" means that the content meets all the WCAG requirements at the specified Level without exceptions.

Most website content will conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA. It partially conforms to Level AAA. We know some parts of this website may not be fully accessible. We are working on these parts of the site and are committed to producing an accessible site for all users.

Content that is not accessible

• Most older PDF and Word documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software 
• Embedded YouTube videos aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software 
• Alternative text is not always applied consistently throughout the site 
• ARIA tags are not used consistently throughout the site 
• Some videos do not have captions or audio description
• Some third party content such as business listings, including images, descriptions, and document such as pdfs

Links

Please be aware that some links may open in a new window. Visit County Durhaml makes every effort to ensure that we only link to reputable websites, however no liability is accepted for the content and information contained on linked websites, or reliance upon information contained on them.

Disproportionate burden

This website complies with The public Sector Bodies (websites and Mobile Applications)(No.2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Details of the information excluded under regulation 4(2) and regulation 7(4) are shown below.

PDF documents since 2018

Some of our content across the site is in PDF format where a durable format is needed. We will be reviewing all PDF documents. However, we have examined documents published after 23 September 2018 and we've assessed the cost of fixing these documents. We believe that doing so would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. However from 1 September 2020 we will be ensuring all newly added PDF are fully accessible.

Pre-recorded time-based media

Pre-recorded time based media added to the site prior to 23rd September 2020 don’t have captions or audio descriptions. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.3 (Audio Description or Media Alternative (Pre-recorded). We plan to update these in due course.

Online maps

We will try and ensure online maps are as accessible as possible, but online maps are currently exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Third Party Content

We do try and monitor the content that third parties place on our website such as images, descriptions and documents. However sometimes due to resources this may not be possible. Some documents that third parties have uploaded, have not been developed or pay for ourselves, and therefore may not reach the accessibility standards required.

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

This content can be provided in an accessible format on request. We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 10 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We welcome feedback on the accessibility of this website. If you find something that you are unable to access, or we have failed to identify a barrier, please let us know.

If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please use one of the contact methods below:

E-mail: info@visitcoutydurham.org

Phone number: 03000 261 220

Address:
Visit County Durham,
2nd Floor,
County Hall,
Dryburn Road,
Durham, DH1 5UL

We usually respond to accessibility feedback from e-mail within 3-5 working days. Sometimes it can take up to 2 weeks.