New Dedicated Disabled Services Section Created on Council Website
THE Council’s website now hosts a dedicated webpage dedicated to information on services for disabled residents, created following feedback from Reading’s disabled community.
A much-improved web layout brings together all relevant information on its ‘Services for disabled people’ section, which can be found on the homepage.
Information which had previously been spread in a variety of locations across the website, has now been merged onto one dedicated page. Information includes disabled parking, assisted bin collections, wheelchair accessible taxis and activities. The improvements were tested by representatives of the Access and Disabilities Working Group and went live on 4 January.
Around 1 in 5 people in the UK have a disability and the changes formed the second phase of a Council project to improve website accessibility. Phase one rolled out in the summer of 2022 with the website updated to ensure users who are not able to use a computer mouse would be able to navigate easily through tabbing across the screen and improved website usability on phones, enabling more residents to access Council information digitally.
The Council recently scored an impressive 92% for website accessibility by the industry standard measuring tool SiteImprove, which checks the website content fortnightly to highlight and score on how accessible it is, the score places the Council’s website in the top 5%.
Councillor Liz Terry Reading Borough Council’s Lead Councillor for Corporate Services and Resources said “My thanks go to the Access and Disabilities Working Group for their tireless work on the dedicated Services for Disabled People section on the Council website. The section which is easily accessed from the home page follows direct feedback from residents from our disabled community, telling us about their frustrations navigating through all the different sections of the Council website to find the information relevant to them.”
“Website accessibility constantly needs to be reviewed and adapted to ensure all residents can digitally access the information they need and we welcome feedback from our residents.”
Councillor Jan Gavin, Chair of the Access and Disabilities Working Group said “I am so pleased we now have a dedicated Services for Disabled People section on the Council website, which brings together important information to meet the needs of our disabled residents in one place. It’s been a long-wished for facility from our disabled community and my thanks go to the Access and Disabilities Working Group and Council’s Digital and Information Communications Technology team for bringing this important work to fruition."
“We’ll continue to work closely and in consultation with our disabled community reviewing and adding additional and supplementary information to meet their needs.”
Visit the council’s accessibility page to find out more https://www.reading.gov.uk/the-council-and-democracy/council-strategies-plans-and-policies/accessibility/