Accessibility

Open Hastings should be usable by everyone who lives here: on a small phone, with a screen reader, with large text or with the keyboard alone. This page says how to make it easier to read, what the site does, and what it doesn't do yet.

Reading aloud

We don't add our own reading voice, because your device's is better and already knows how you like it:

iPhone and iPad: turn on Speak Screen (Settings, Accessibility, Spoken Content), then swipe down from the top of the screen with two fingers.
Android: use Select to Speak or TalkBack (Settings, Accessibility).
Edge on a computer: Read aloud in the menu, or Ctrl Shift U. Safari on a Mac: Edit, Speech, Start Speaking. Chrome: Reading mode in the menu has a play button.
Screen readers (VoiceOver, TalkBack, NVDA, JAWS) work with the site: every page has headings in order, a "skip to the record" link, labelled navigation, and lists a screen reader can count.

Reading in another language

We don't translate the site ourselves, but your browser or phone can, into almost any language, including Polish, Arabic, Ukrainian, Romanian, Turkish and Bengali. Every page is plain text, so the whole page translates.

Chrome (Android, computer): open the menu (⋮) and choose Translate, or tap the translate bar if it appears.
Safari (iPhone, iPad, Mac): tap the aA or translate button in the address bar and choose Translate to your language.
Edge: click the translate icon in the address bar. Firefox: click the translation icon in the address bar.
Samsung Internet: open the menu and choose Translate.

A warning: machine translation can get council terms wrong. "Refused", "granted with conditions", "deferred", "called in" and "exempt" have exact meanings in planning and council business, and a translation may soften or change them. Before you act on a decision or a deadline, check the council's own document, which every entry links to, or ask someone you trust to read it with you.

Plain language

We write in plain English and explain council and planning words where they appear. Council documents themselves are often not plain, so where we quote them, we quote them exactly and link to the original rather than rewording what a council decided.

What the site does

Every page works without JavaScript; search, the map's lights and the text size control are additions on top.
Every page says it is in British English, so screen readers and translation tools read it correctly.
Text is real text, never a picture of words. Charts and maps are drawn as text-labelled graphics, and the lists beside them hold the same items for anyone who can't see the drawing.
Keyboard focus shows as a blue outline on every link, button and field. Movement is reduced if your device asks for less motion.
Light and dark versions follow your device's setting; body text is at least 4.5 to 1 against its background in both.
Colour is never the only signal: a decision says "granted" or "refused" in words, and the map's lights are named.
This week, printable is laid out in large type on A4 for anyone who would rather read it on paper.

Known gaps

Council documents (PDFs) are the councils'. Many are scanned or untagged and hard for a screen reader; we link to them as published. Where we have the text, the paper's page on this site shows the parts we quote.
The town map's individual lights can't be reached by keyboard. Every light is also in the list below the map, which can.
Some long tables (spending, timetables) are hard to follow on a small screen or with a screen reader. The spending tables are also on Download the data, to open in a spreadsheet or a reader of your own.
We haven't had the site tested by an accessibility specialist or by disabled residents yet. This statement is our own check against WCAG 2.2 level AA, not a certificate.

Telling us when something gets in your way

If a page is hard to use with your screen reader, keyboard, magnifier or anything else, write to Laurie Harrison, who edits the site, at editor@openhastings.com. Say which page, what you were trying to do and what you use to read the web, if you're happy to. "Something wrong with this page?" at the foot of every page opens your own email program with the page's address already filled in. Mail goes to the editor's own inbox; the site stores nothing.