This website is a resource for members of the community in and around Southend on Sea and across the UK. 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)
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 this website are not fully accessible:
Some interactive infographic tools and maps created for the website are not navigable entirely by keyboard
some older PDF documents may not be fully accessible to screen reader software
some video streams do not yet have manually generated captions, but have automatic captions
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print or braille:
email – info@catchmenttocoast.uk
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.
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: info@catchmenttocoast.uk
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).
BeFloodReady is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to ‘the non-compliances’ or ‘exemptions’ listed below.
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
some content of the PDFs downloadable from this website may not be fully accessible with screen reader technology or accessibility requirements
embedded video on this website includes automated captions/subtitles, but not verified, manually generated captions/subtitles
the residential and business property graphics with interactive hotspots to reveal more information are not fully accessible for use with screen readers/keyboard navigation. However, all of the information within is already contained on the same page in text format.
We have assessed that it would be a disproportionate burden to fix all inaccessible documents published since September 2018, due to the low level of usage for the majority of documents.
We believe that the benefit to our website visitors of assigning staff to fix all documents in scope of the regulations on the catchmenttocoast.uk website would not be justified, given how infrequently the majority of these documents are accessed, and would impose a disproportionate burden on Southend on Sea and Thurrock Councils. To make all documents in scope of the regulations accessible would take up a huge amount of resource. We believe this resource would be better allocated to concentrating on making new content and documents accessible, as well as ensuring all content and documents created for the new unitary websites are accessible.
The interactive maps which show the locations of various catchment areas, are powered by Google, thus we have no control over accessibility of this function. Currently, it is not designed to be navigated using the keyboard and has limited accessibility to screen reader tools. Please contact info@catchmenttocoast.uk if you cannot access the map and require this information in another format.
Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on flood guidance and helpful planning tool..
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.
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. However, we are looking into how we can make all future PDFs uploaded to the flood toolkit accessible to all.
This statement was prepared on 19 December 2023. It was last reviewed on 05 January 2024.
This website was last tested on 05 January 2024. The test was carried out by Nettl Systems Ltd.
A sample of main pages on the website were reviewed using the WebAim WAVE accessibility evaluation tool (https://wave.webaim.org/). Where the WAVE tool reported errors, these were resolved by the website developer wherever possible. Where this has not been possible, these areas of the site are detailed above.