Accessibility statement

This website is run by The Counselling Vine. We are committed to providing an accessible website that is easy to use by anyone, whatever their age, background, access device or level of ability/disability.

This means that:

Our pages are written to be clear and easy to understand.
The website is organised so you can find what you need.

You should be able to:

Change colours, contrast levels and fonts.
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 aim to meet the AA level of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This is the international standard for accessible websites and content.

How accessible is this website?

Most of our website should be accessible. It should work well when used with access devices such as screen readers, braille readers, as well as smart phones and other devices.

These are the internet browsers that we support on our website:

Level 1

Mobile Safari v.15.3
Mobile Safari v.15.4
Chrome Mobile v.100
Chrome v.100
Safari v.15.3

Level 2

Mobile Safari v.14.1
Chrome Mobile v.99
Chrome v.99
Safari v.15.4
Edge v.100
Samsung browser v.16.2
Firefox v.99

Level New

Mobile Safari v.16
Chrome v.101
Safari v.16
Edge v.101
Samsung browser v.17

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

If you need information in a different format to the one that we provide, please email us at thecounsellingvine@gmail.com

If you have difficulty using any part of our website, email us at thecounsellingvine@gmail.com and mark your email for the attention of the Web and Digital Services team.

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 about the accessibility of our website, you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Counselling Vine 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 listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

HTML is used to format some content.

This fails WCAG 2.1 level A success criterion 1.3.1 (info and relationships). We are working to correct this.

Some element IDs are not unique.

This fails WCAG 2.1 level A success criteria 1.3.1 (info and relationships) and 4.1.1 (parsing). We are working to correct this.

Visible label and accessible name do not match

The links in the navigation crumb trail of some pages do not match the labels for those links. This may make these links harder to correctly identify and activate for people using assistive technology. This fails WCAG 2.1 level A success criterion 2.5.3 (label in name). We are working to correct this.

Link without a text alternative

Links in the footer of our ‘search for a job pages’ for Arabic, Urdu, Bengali and Chinese language contact details do not have text alternatives. This fails WCAG 2.1 level A success criteria 2.4.4 (link Purpose – In Context) and 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value). We are working to correct this.

Text is clipped when resized

The text ‘follow us on social media’ in the footer of our ‘search for a job pages’ can be clipped if the page is magnified. This fails WCAG 2.1 level AA criterion 1.4.4 (resize text). We are working to correct this.

Container element is empty

On some category landing pages, there is an empty container element on tiles that contain paragraph text rather than lists. This can be confusing for people using screen readers. This fails WCAG 2.1 level A success criterion 1.3.1 (info and relationships). We are working to address this.

Some video captions are auto-generated and are not always accurate.

This fails WCAG 2.1 level A success criterion 1.2.2 (captions (pre-recorded)).

PDFs and other documents

Some PDFs and documents may not meet accessibility standards. For example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This fails WCAG 2.1 level A success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

Currently, all documents are checked with an automated test before being published on the site. This eliminates many common accessibility errors but does not guarantee that documents will be fully accessible.

We manually check and fix:

the most-viewed documents (currently, approximately the top 10%).
documents that are essential for using our services.
documents intended for audiences likely to have accessibility needs.
These documents should be fully accessible.

If you are unable to read a document on our site, please contact us and we will help you. Email us at thecounsellingvine@gmail.com and mark your email for the Web and Digital Services team’s attention.

See the section on disproportionate burden for further details.

Images

Some of our pages and documents contain complex images such as diagrams, charts, graphs or infographics. Some of these may not be adequately described. This fails WCAG 2.1 level A success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content). We are working to correct this.

Legal and financial documents

Some legal and financial documents on our site are provided as records of the original documents and may not be fully accessible. For example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 level A success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value). Please contact us for accessible alternatives.

Disproportionate burden

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix accessibility issues if doing so would be a disproportionate burden (where fixing an issue would cost a lot but provide minimal or no benefit and would affect our ability to provide our services).

PDFs and other documents

We’ve assessed that it would be a disproportionate burden to make all PDFs and documents published on our websites fully accessible.

Most of our documents are rarely viewed (in many cases, less than 50 times a year from a population of 1.1 million people) and so users with disabilities or impairments are unlikely to be negatively impacted. For this reason, we don’t believe the cost to fully fix all documents is justified.

For the majority of our documents, we have committed to ensuring they pass an automated accessibility check. This will eliminate many common accessibility issues but will not necessarily ensure that the document is fully accessible.

For our most-viewed documents (approximately, the top 10%), documents that are essential for using our services, and documents intended for audiences likely to have accessibility needs, we are committed to manually checking them and making sure they are fully accessible.

We will continue to investigate cost-effective ways of improving the accessibility of all our documents.

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

PDFs and other documents

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.

The accessibility regulations also do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents provided by third-parties that we have no control over.

Live video

Live video streams do not have captions. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions – live).

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

How we test this website

We use an automated tool, Siteimprove accessibility checker, to check the accessibility of our website every five days. We also use Siteimprove to assess the accessibility of most PDFs prior to publication on our site. We routinely carry out manual checks on a proportion of our pages and documents to identify issues that can’t be detected automatically.

We have a programme of work in place to address the accessibility of our PDFs and documents. We have allocated new staff specifically for this programme.

We have increased the training and support available to our staff to help them create accessible content.

About this statement

This statement was prepared on 01/11/23. It is reviewed every three months.