SUBJECT: PLEASE READ: acknowledgement / response to your request

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coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please expect delays with our response
to you whilst we divert resources during this extraordinary period.

Thank you for your request. We have to respond to Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) requests within 20 working days and as soon as is reasonably
practicable, however please expect delays currently in light of the above.

However, please note that if your request relates to the following, this
email acts as a response to your request and you will not receive further
correspondence from us.

Information relating to Norfolk County Council:

If your request relates to any of the following, you should refer your
request to  [1][email address] , as the County
Council is responsible for these services:

·      Roads and Transport – potholes, road safety

·      Education and Learning - schools

·      Care, support and health – adult social care, blue badges

·      Children and Families – adoption

·      Libraries, local history and archives

·      Trading Standards

Information that is published on our website:

If your request relates to the following information, I should advise that
this information is exempt under Section 21 (1) of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000, as the information is reasonably accessible via our
website: [2]https://www.south-norfolk.gov.uk/about-u...

·      Council Budgets - refer to our Budget Books
·      Contracts - refer to the Council’s Contract
Register
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Rate accounts
·      Staff - refer to the Senior Structure Chart
·      Money spent - refer to data relating to spending
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·      National Assistance Funerals - refer to our list of funerals, inc.
spend

In accordance with the FOIA this email acts as a Refusal Notice.  In terms
of the exemption, you have a right of appeal against our decision.  In the
first instance this appeal must be internal, and you can email
[3][South Norfolk District Council request email]  to request a review.

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3. mailto:[South Norfolk District Council request email]

Dear Winston

I refer to your Freedom of Information request to which I am now in a
position to respond on behalf of South Norfolk Council.

With regards to the Accessibility Statement and the following declaration.

Disproportionate burden statement

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard.
For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag. Our
forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to
look like our website. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1
(information and relationships).

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with interactive tools and
transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate
burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make
another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal, likely to
be in September 2021.

We are migrating South Norfolk District Council and Broadland District
Council's forms servers into a single service, this will take time and
effort to accomplish but it would take us decidedly longer to correct all
the accessibility issues on both of the Council's current "forms servers".
We decided the best use of our time and resources was to ensure we had a
joint compliant forms service for both councils as soon as possible. This
will likely be in September 2021 when the contracts for the existing
services expire and we have migrated these services and tested them to
ensure they are fully compliant, ready to integrate with the new joint web
service for both district councils.

Our use of the Disproportionate Burden is by no means trying to avoid
providing accessible services, but is being used at this time to enable us
to provide the very best services for all our customers in the most
efficient way and ensure we continue to meet, and where possible exceed,
expectations when meeting accessibility compliance and regulations.

We are working towards providing the best WCAG compliant digital services
we can by building this into our solutions from the ground up as we merge
services from both councils, the work we are doing is helping us achieve
significant savings for both councils which will enable us to continue to
deliver the best services to the public we can. The work to provide our
joint services has been meticulously planned and resourced with no spare
capacity or time allocated for retrospective development of legacy
systems. Our focus is to move forward as quickly as possible with
providing the best digital solutions that will continue to meet our
customers’ needs and expectations, this includes ensuring our services are
WCAG complaint and fit for the future.

I hope this is of assistance and is sufficient to meet your requirements,
but if, for whatever reason you wish to get back to me, please feel free
to do so. In particular if you are unhappy with the information provided
or how your request was handled please let me know and I will explain how
you can request an internal review of our decision. 

Please quote SFOI 20-160  in any further correspondence concerning this
request.

Regards

Emma Goddard
Senior Governance Officer
t 01508 533943 e [email address]  

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