The Municipality of South Huron is dedicated to ensuring that our website, and its content, meets the requirements set out under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
The launch of our current website was an important step toward meeting the requirements of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005.
The Municipality of South Huron is making every effort to ensure that all internal tools are accessible and is working with third-party vendors to make them aware of the provincial requirements. To ensure our website and content are accessible, we conduct regular checks on the web pages and receive training on how to create accessible digital documents.
We are striving to provide a municipal website that is designed to respond to the needs of an accessible community, and includes the following guidelines:
- well structured content
- use plain English (except for specific words that don’t have an alternative)
- use short sentences
- explain acronyms
- whenever possible, documents (PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint) will be posted in accessible form
- write good link text
- make images and videos accessible
- ensure new features work on assistive technologies
However, we know that some aspects of this website are not fully accessible and we are continuing to work on resolving them:
- some content may not be in plain English or short sentences
- navigation links may be confused with other links on the page
- lists of content may contain duplicate links
- wide HTML tables cannot be viewed on small screens
- a large proportion of PDFs and other documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
- video and audio may not have captions or transcripts
- an ongoing effort is being made to make historical documents available and compliant with the standard
Non-Accessible Content
The Municipality of South Huron recognizes situations where it is not practicable to present content in an accessible format. In these cases, best efforts are being used to provide citizens an accessible alternative or assistance in acquiring the information needed.
Specific aspects of this website are non-complaint with the WCAG 2.1 AA standard, as shown in the list below.
- Mapping or GIS data.
- Engineering drawings or complex technical data.
- Legacy applications or data that cannot be updated or cannot be updated with reasonable effort/expenses.
- Vendor web applications where the Municipality was unable to negotiate contractual obligation to maintain accessibility.
- Presentation content where rendering accessible would hinder the ability to achieve its intended purpose.
- Content that cannot be rendered accessible without significant impact.
- Excel documents, for example financial information
- Content to be posted created by third party sources, ex. Agendas, minutes from outside boards reporting to Council;
- External contributors may provide content which does not comply with web accessibility standards. Converting such document to an accessible format is deemed non-practicable.
