Accessibility

This accessibility statement applies to the West Lothian Council website (opens new window)

We are committed to making our website as accessible as possible and hope you find it easy to use.

The website is designed to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 (opens new window)

Website Readability and Usability

This website is run by West Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
• navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
• navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
• listen to most of the website using a screen reader

Most of the above functions can be achieved using our in-built software provided by ReciteMe and described below, or using your own software.

We have made every effort to ensure this web site is easily readable using plain English. Our web team regularly review content and provide training and recommendations to all our content publishers to ensure all web content is written in a format which is as easy to understand where possible.

Recite Me Accessibility Tool Bar

Recite Me helps people to access our website to do the things they need to do, like find information about how to access our service by making complaints, access publications and read news.

The Recite Me toolbar has a unique range of functions. You can use it to:

• Have the text on our website read aloud (including PDFs)
• Download the text as an MP3 file to play it where and when it suits you
• Change font sizes and colours
• Customise background colour
• Translate text into more than 100 different languages

The Recite Me Accessibility Tool Bar can be launched by clicking on the Accessibility button located in the footer of the website.

How do I access the Recite Me toolbar?

You can open the Recite Me language and accessibility toolbar by clicking on the

 (Recite Me Accessibility Button).

This Recite Me Accessibility Button now appears in the site footer on every page of our website.

After you click on the button the Recite Me toolbar opens and displays a range of different options for customising how the website looks and how you can access the content.

Recite Me Toolbar

Text size

The text size for this site can also be changed using your browser.

• Internet Explorer: Select the "View" menu, then "Text size"
• FireFox: Select the "View" menu, then "Zoom" or "Zoom text only"
• Safari: Select the "View" menu, then "Make text bigger" or "Make text smaller"
• Opera: Select the "View" menu, then "Zoom"
• Chrome: Select the "More settings" menu, then under "Appearance" use the arrows next to "Page zoom"

How accessible this website is

We are aware that some of the areas of the website are not fully accessible

• you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
• most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• live video streams will not have captions
• some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard or screen reader due to form labelling (which is in the process of being amended)

Feedback and contact information  

If you have any comments regarding website, please complete our Online Feedback Form.

Reporting accessibility problems

If you have any concerns or think we're not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact webadmin1@westlothian.gov.uk (opens new window)

Enforcement Procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the 'accessibility regulations'). If you're not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) (opens new window).

Technical information about this website's accessibility

West Lothian Council 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 (WCAG) 2.2 (opens new window) AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below

Non-accessible content

As part of ongoing accessibility analysis, we utilise accessibility software to monitor the site and identify any issues and non-complaince, whilst we also carry out regular content reviews on a weekly basis to assess any added or updated content to ensure they are meeting the required standards.

Work is currently being carried out to actively reduce the number of documents published on the website and where this is not possible alternative action taken including:

• making documents available in HTML format where possible as mentioned above
• setting up online accessibility training to educate staff on how to publish accessibly
• providing accessibility tools through ReciteMe to provide functions to read documents where possible

Requesting content in an alternative accessible format

Should you require content in a format that is not immediately available on the website you can request this using our online form:

• Request content in an alternative accessible format

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

Third Party Documents

There are documents published on our website which have been created by third parties such as other organisations. As we do not own these documents it is impossible for us to ensure these are fully accessible.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 20 September 2025. It was last reviewed on 06 October 2025.

This website last was tested on 16 July 2025 by the Government Digital Service. Testing and fixing of highlighted accessibility issues have been carried out between July and October 2025

A sample set of high traffic and interactive pages were chosen as part of the testing.

As part of ongoing accessibility analysis, we utilise accessibility software to monitor the site and identify any issues, whilst we also carry out regular content reviews on a weekly basis to assess any added or updated content to ensure they are meeting the required standards.