Website Accessibility
In Parramatta, it matters to us that everyone feels welcome. We’re working towards our goal of Parramatta being a city that is accessible for everyone to work, live and play.
Where possible, At Parramatta has been built according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) so the site is useable for as many people as possible, quick to access, and streamlined for updates and modifications.
This website is built to provide access for a variety of new technologies and web browsers, including assistive technologies for the Internet. For most visitors, the website is now easier to use, quicker to access, and more streamlined for updates and modifications.
City of Parramatta Council is continuing to improve the website to comply with web standards outlined by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Australian Government Information Management Office .
The website now uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and XHTML for most page layout and design details. While there may still be tables and spacer GIFs in a few spots which are often used on websites to set up and control page structure, City of Parramatta Council is continuing working to remove these potential barriers to accessibility including the avoidance of token accessibility tools that interfere with existing assisted technologies such as screen-readers.
To help move web technologies forward (toward accessibility, additional security, and functionality), City of Parramatta Council supports the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Standards Initiative , which encourages users to upgrade their browsers. Older browsers like Netscape 4.x or Internet Explorer 6.x weren't built to fully support CSS. Consequently, the website’s presentation on older browsers may look different, although the content can still be accessed from older commercial browsers.
Visitors who continue to use older browsers will see a much simpler presentation, one that offers the full content in a stripped-down design. City of Parramatta Council recognises that imperfections are bound to appear, even though it has done its best to ensure the website renders as consistently as possible.
PDF Documents and Accessibility
A number of documents on the website are only available in Portable Document Format (PDF). Though the City of Parramatta Council website attempts to only list materials that are available in HTML or other equally accessible formats, sometimes resources are identified that can only be provided efficiently in PDF format and are too important to ignore. In these cases where a resource is only available in PDF, a link will be provided identifying resources that aid in accessing PDF files.
Converting PDF to a More Accessible Format
Since PDF documents may not be readily accessible to screen readers and may not be formatted for visually impaired users, the following tools can be used to convert PDF documents into plain text or plain HTML documents. This service is provided by Adobe.
Online Conversion:
www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html
Email Conversion:
For converting offline documents, you can send your PDF as an email attachment and a converted version of the document will be posted back to you.
HTML version:
pdf2html@adobe.com
TEXT version:
pdf2txt@adobe.com
An Adobe Acrobat access plug-in is also available from: www.adobe.com/support/downloads/
