Accessible Parish Council Website Design

Witley Parish Council

Accessible website design for a parish council in Surrey

About The Project

User-Friendly Navigation and Clear Layout

An accessible parish council website should have a clear, logical structure that allows residents to quickly find important information. The Witley & Milford Parish Council website should feature an intuitive menu, with well-labeled sections for meetings, planning applications, community events, and local services. A search function and a simple, uncluttered design will help users, including those with disabilities, navigate the site easily.

Compliance with Web Accessibility Standards

To ensure inclusivity, the website must comply with WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), making it usable for those with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments. Features like screen reader compatibility, text resizing options, high-contrast mode, and keyboard navigation will improve accessibility. Documents, such as meeting minutes and council reports, should be provided in accessible formats (e.g., HTML or properly tagged PDFs).

Community Engagement and Transparency

An accessible website should encourage community participation and transparency in local governance. The Witley & Milford Parish Council website should include easy-to-read updates on council decisions, a contact form for resident queries, and an option for subscribing to notifications. Live-streamed or recorded council meetings with captions and transcripts would further enhance accessibility, ensuring all residents can stay informed and engaged with parish affairs.

Project Details

View more of our parish council websites

What you need to know

How long does it take to build an accessible parish council website?

If you already have a logo and the content (words and pictures) to go on your new website, it will take approximately two weeks to build. We often find that writing the words to go on an accessible parish council website often take longer than expected but we would provide guidance on this. Uploading of documents is normally a straightforward process and everything will need to be in PDF format.

How much does an accessible parish council website cost?

Websites are quoted on a basis of how much work needs doing. A basic accessible parish council website would start at £650 (initial setup fee). We know we are not the cheapest but strongly believe we provide a solid product, backed up by excellent customer service (see our reviews).

How do you edit the accessible parish council website once it is built?

We’ll provide full instructions on how to edit the words, latest news posts, events, documents and photos on the parish council website as part of the build costs. For major changes, we can provide a very competitive quote.

Will the parish council website be WCAG 2.1 compliant?

The website will be built to conform to best practice industry standards for web design and accessibility. The website will also have an accessibility menu for increasing text size, changing background colour and highlight links.

Does an accessible parish council website need to be responsive?

With over half of all internet browsing and searches done with a mobile phone or tablet, it is vital that a parish council website works on these devices. A properly designed parish council website should do just that and change its appearance depending on the screen size. All of our parish council websites work on all devices.

What SEO do you need for a parish council website?

To get found, your parish council website will most likely need to be on the first page of Google or Bing. This will require your website to have some search engine optimisation carried out on it. All of our parish council websites have the on-page SEO done while being built. Typically, there will be some good quality links to your parish website already, negating the need for any additional work to be done.

Can you organise website hosting and email for the parish council?

As a full service parish council website design company we provide a comprehensive range of hosting solutions for parish council websites. As well as hosting we can also look after email accounts for the parish council.

How do you make an accessible parish council website easy to navigate?

It’s always a great idea to organise the website in such a way that is logical for anyone visiting the parish council website. We like to keep our menu structure simple and easy to use. This also keeps the mobile menu as small as possible. Having more than two layers is generally a bad idea for user experience.

What is a good domain name for a parish council?

The shorter your domain name or web address the better. The full guidance can be found on the gov.uk website.

We would recommend using the durmchapel-pc.gov.uk as opposed to durmchapelparishcouncil.gov.uk purely for brevity.

The domain name will not influence how the website is indexed on Google. We can provide guidance on this as well as the procedure for applying for a .gov.uk domain name.

What information needs to be on an accessible parish council website?

Parish councils must adhere to the guidelines set out in the Transparency Code for Smaller Authorities. Which states the following information should be published:

All items of expenditure above £100.
End of year accounts.
Annual governance statement.
Internal audit report.
List of councillor or member responsibilities.
The details of public land and building assets.
Minutes, agendas and meeting papers of formal meetings.

Want to know some more?

Our parish council website design expertise

As a full service parish council web designer we can offer a wide range of services to get your parish council the credible online presence it deserves.