This statement applies to Quorate, the meeting administration service used by parish and town councils in England. It covers the pages a clerk and their councillors sign in to. It also covers the quorate.org website, which describes the service and takes requests for a trial.
We want as many people as possible to be able to use this service. That means you should be able to change colours and contrast, navigate the whole service with a keyboard, and read it at the text size you need.
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
How accessible this website is
Everything we have tested passes the WCAG 2.2 AA standard, and to the best of our knowledge there are no other failures in the service.
We have not tested all of it. We tested Windows High Contrast in an emulation only. We have not tested on a tablet. No independent auditor has checked our work. We have listened to the service in VoiceOver on a Mac. We have not listened to it in NVDA on Windows, and that gap is listed as a non-compliance below.
Feedback and contact information
If you find a problem, or you need something from Quorate in a format you can use, email accessibility@quorate.org. Tell us the page you were on and what happened. We will reply within 5 working days.
If the problem is with something your council has published, ask your council's clerk. If you write to us about it by mistake, we will say so and help you take it to your council.
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).
Technical information about this website's accessibility
Quorate 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
The website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard. That testing is not yet complete. Preparation of this accessibility statement, below, sets out what has been tested and what has not.
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
We are not claiming that any part of this service would be a disproportionate burden to make accessible. We are not relying on the exemption for content that falls outside the scope of the accessibility regulations.
The documents we produce
Every agenda, notice, summons and set of minutes we produce comes as a tagged PDF. Headings are marked as headings, tables as tables, and the running header and footer are marked as decoration so a screen reader passes over them. Each file identifies itself as PDF/UA. The Word version of each document carries Word's own heading styles. A screen reader and a table of contents both pick up its structure.
Where a council needs one of these documents in another format, email accessibility@quorate.org and we will supply it.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
On 9 September 2026 we listened to this service in VoiceOver on a Mac in Safari. We walked 25 pages one element at a time, signed in and signed out, and recorded what VoiceOver said about every element on every page. That pass found three faults, and all three were fixed the same day. Every empty box marked as required announced itself as holding invalid data before anything had been typed into it. The boxes for writing each minute did not say which minute they belonged to. Ten links on the agenda template announced only as "Change". The pages those fixes touched were walked again afterwards. With them fixed, every control announced its name, its role and its state. That is what success criteria 4.1.2 and 1.3.1 of the guidelines require.
We have not listened to this service in NVDA on Windows. Screen readers differ from one another. Until we have heard the service in NVDA, we cannot confirm how it behaves there. We plan to run that pass and fix whatever it finds by 31 October 2026.
What we're doing to improve accessibility
- Testing the service with NVDA on Windows and fixing what that pass finds.
- Commissioning an independent accessibility audit.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on . It was last reviewed on .
This website was last tested on against the WCAG 2.2 AA standard. The test was carried out by Quorate. Nobody else was commissioned to test it.
On 9 September 2026 we listened to the service in VoiceOver on a Mac in Safari. We walked 25 pages one element at a time, signed in and signed out. We kept a written record of what VoiceOver said about every element. The pass found three faults, and all three were fixed the same day. The pages those fixes touched were walked again afterwards. The pass covers the announcement of every control's name, role and state, and the order and grouping a screen reader reads a page in. It does not cover any of the browser work described next.
On 6 September 2026 we drove every page in a real browser. That was 31 pages a clerk sees and nine anyone can see. We checked each one in the light and dark appearances and in all three colour themes. We also checked it with Windows High Contrast emulated, at 320 pixels wide, at 200% and 400% zoom, with text spacing widened and by keyboard alone. We measured every control against the 24 pixel target size. We checked every focus ring against the surface it sits on and read every page's accessibility tree. That pass found a page that scrolled sideways at 320 pixels, a button below the contrast minimum, a tab that vanished under Windows High Contrast, error messages announced without being tied to the field they belonged to, and several smaller faults. All of them are fixed. The fixes landed after that sweep, and we have not repeated it. The checks listed next prove the fixes.
These are also checked automatically on every change we make.
- Automated checks with axe on every page in the clerk's meeting loop. Checks like these catch roughly a third of the problems a person would find.
- Colour contrast, asserted for every colour pairing the service uses, in the light and dark appearances and in all three colour themes.
- What markup can prove about the keyboard. Every control can be reached by tabbing. Nothing is clickable without also being focusable. Every page has a skip link and the landmarks a screen reader navigates by.
- The language of each page is declared. Motion is suppressed for anyone whose device asks for it.
None of this covers NVDA or JAWS on Windows, a real Windows High Contrast machine, a tablet or an independent auditor. We do not claim to have checked any of them. We cannot say how the service sounds in NVDA or JAWS. We did all of our testing ourselves. The NVDA pass and the independent audit are listed above as work we still intend to do.
Your council's own statement
The accessibility regulations bind the council. If your council publishes pages of its own, it needs its own accessibility statement covering them. Your statement can draw on the technical detail about Quorate given here.