The High Peak Borough Council website has been designed and developed to provide users with a more enjoyable interactive experience of the council. The website is designed to be inclusive and to provide access to all users regardless of technological or physical disability.
The following highlights some of the initiatives designed to make the website interface and content more usable and accessible.
The website interface has been designed to provide a consistent structure throughout the site, so users will know exactly where to find navigation, content and important functionality and information.
The structure of the interface is broken down as follows:
Content organization has been based on the Local Government Category Listings. This structure provides a common best practice approach to information architecture across council websites and provides guidelines for top-level navigation and content structures for service directories. We hope that the use of this structure within the High Peak Borough Council website will enable users to find information with more clarity, speed and ease.
Most browsers support access key functionality, which provide access to key parts of the website interface. To use access keys follow the following guidelines:
Internet Explorer users may also need to hit the ENTER key to activate a link.
We have included some of the recommended UK Government accesskeys:
S - Skip navigation
1 - Home page
2 - What's new
3 - Site map
7 - Complaints procedure
8 - Terms and conditions
9 - Feedback form
0 - Access key details
We have also included the following additional accesskeys to access the main sections of the website:
A - A to Z
B - Business
C - Contact Us
D - Council & Democracy
E - Environment
F - Find Us
G - Your Neighbourhood
H - Housing
L - Leisure & Culture
M - Making A Payment
N - News
P - Planning
V - Job Vacancies
Y - Have Your Say
The High Peak Borough Council website has been designed to comply with the guidelines issued by W3C/WAI. Where possible all pages meet priority 3 (AAA) guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which is the highest level of conformance that can be achieved.
Users with disabilities use assistive technology to aid with the use of a website and to increase the overall user experience and the ability to complete tasks that would not be achievable otherwise.
As part of the development process the website has been coded to enable the following technologies:
If you experience any problems using these tools or have any recommendations to improve accessibility using assistive technology please contact us with your feedback and we will do our best to make improvements.
Some documents on the website, which are downloadable, can also be made available in large print, Braille, audio-tape or in other languages upon request. This may take a few weeks' notice to arrange. If you require any documents in another format, please contact Michelle Farraday on 0845 129 77 77 or 01298 28400 extension 2100, for further information.