Some of our offices have audio induction loops. You may wish to check whether a loop is available before your visit, please see the contact us page.

Worcestershire Pension Fund is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1. AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed in the Non-accessible content section.

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

• 1.4.3 Colour contrast minimum fails 
  • in some areas of the site text falls on poor contrast background  
  • text on some focus elements and forms do not meet minimum contrast
• 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) fail 
  • the back to top function is a floating object that obscures content 
  • on zoom the search bar obscures content
• 2.4.2 page titled fails 
  • some page titles throughout the site do not announce 
  • the search page does not announce that results have been filtered on page load
• 2.4.4 link purpose in context fails 
  • some download links may not make sense when read on their own 
  • the same link text is used for links going to different destinations 
• 2.4.13 Focus Appearance fail 
  • not all elements on focus have an obvious change of appearance to those with low vision 
• 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation fail 
  • some pages use collapsible content instead of navigating to a new page, which maybe confusing as its inconsistent navigation 
  • some pages have many collapsible elements and extra interactivity to be able to read content on the page
• 3.1.4 Abbreviations fail 
  • some pages have unexplained abbreviations  
• 3.1.5 Reading Level fail 
  • some pages have a considerable amount of text and complex language  
• 3.2.1 On focus fail 
  • on load of the website the cookie item receives focus which is confusing for keyboard navigation 
• 4.1.2 name, role, value fails 
  • on the search page screen reader users do not know that the search results have been actioned or how many results their search found

We intend to fix these items in due course.

Issues with files

• there may be some files that are not fully accessible

We use Siteimprove tool to monitor any issues regarding accessibility and aim to fix any issues that has been found as soon as possible. We use Adobe Pro's accessibility checker to check the PDF documents and Microsoft Office Accessibility Checker to check any Microsoft Office files. We have also created a guidance for our staff how to make accessible documents, for more information on this, please see the SCULPT for Accessibility page.

Issues with third-party applications

We use some third-party applications which might not all be fully accessible, but the third-party companies are either in the process of reviewing their applications or have reviewed the applications and given a statement when the issues are going to be fixed.

Disproportionate burden

We have not identified anything that qualifies as disproportionate burden yet, but we are still evaluating our sites and may update this when we identify issues.

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

Regulations do not apply to the following content of a website or mobile application of a public sector body:

Older files

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. 

Third party content that we have not paid for

Social media buttons such as Tweet/Like

We use Silktide to check this site for accessibility issues.

Worcestershire County Council's IT and Digital Team uses WAVE Evaluation Tool to for checking individual web pages, and the Silktide tool for checking and monitoring the whole site's accessibility status. Silktide crawls the site every five days.

See the SCULPT for Accessibility pages for more information on what we are doing to improve document accessibility.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on February 2023. It was last reviewed on 5 October 2024.

This website was last tested during October 2024. The test was carried out by using our own testing methods and using third party input.

Manual testing

To do our testing we chose a selection of home pages, document pages, custom pages and a typical form to offer a cross-section of page types within the website.

The pages on this pensions website follow the same template and functions of the Worcestershire County Council website.

We tested the following pages manually to ascertain any accessibility issues:

• Homepage
• About us
• Pensions administration
• Pensioner newsletters
• Funding and investments
• Contact us

Automated testing

Worcestershire County Council subscribe and pay for the automated Silktide tool for checking and monitoring the whole website's accessibility status regularly to identify any ongoing issues.