Questioner:

Mark Banks (via email)

Scrutiny Meeting:

Scrutiny Management Board 7 November 2023

Question:

As a frequent user of Herefordshire Council's MyHerefordshire resident services portal, I want to submit a question regarding plans for improving the website's accessibility, transparency, and communication around service requests.

Despite repeated contact, I continue to face issues like service requests being misleadingly labelled as "Closed" immediately upon submission, inconsistent email confirmations, and general non-compliance with WCAG accessibility standards.

I have lodged a formal complaint outlining these concerns but wanted to bring the matter directly to this committee's attention as you oversee the website and online systems.

My question is - can you provide details on what priority is being given to updating MyHerefordshire's accessibility, what specific timeline commitments exist for implementing changes, and how the Council plans to address misleading practices like inaccurate service request statuses in the interim before system upgrades?

As an engaged resident, I am very supportive of plans to improve MyHerefordshire. However, I believe urgent interim solutions must also be implemented in parallel to benefit all users. I welcome your insights on how to balance long-term upgrades with prompt communication improvements.

Thank you for your oversight of this vital public resource. I look forward to your response on how accessibility, transparency, and accuracy will be enhanced.

Regards,

Mark Banks

Response:

Thank you for your question.

We take accessibility very seriously and our website should always be compliant with the accessibility regulations for Local Authorities - WCAG2.1, Level AA. No content is added without first being checked it is compliant with the accessibility regulations and we regularly review the website in line with the accessibility requirements.

We have carried out an accessibility audit (in compliance with WCAG2.1, Level AA) on the MyHerefordshire area of the website – The findings of this were that there was some alt-text missing from the map markers, maps are not required to be compliant with the regulations, however we have now rectified and added alt-text to the markers, also there was missing alt-text from the image of the local councillor – this we have passed to our developers to be implemented as soon as possible.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Questioner:

Mark Banks (via email)

Scrutiny Meeting:

Scrutiny Management Board November 2023

Supplementary Question:

In light of concerns regarding misleading service request statuses on the MyHerefordshire site, could the Council provide specific details on their planned strategies and timeline to address and rectify these inaccuracies, ensuring transparency and reliability for users?

Regards

Mark

Response:

The service request labelling is dependent on the type of form that is used for a process. What we term a ‘single stage process’ which is a one-step transaction form such as the one you have used, we are currently unable to change the status to received, the default software functionality is “Closed” for a single stage process that has effectively been completed once it has generated an email and we have no facility to change that directly.

Where we have built more complex processes (non-single stage forms) that either feed into other systems or a route that hands the service off to another party (rather than just generating an email) the statuses are more complex/reflective of the stage it’s at and will not show case closed until the whole transaction is completed for the customer.

However, we are in the process of reviewing all our forms and processes through our transformation programme and will be upgrading forms, so that the majority of our forms will be built on more complex processes (in terms of the back end – not a more complex process for the customer) so there will be more intuitive statuses available to the customer.