Accessibility statement

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. This means you should be able to:

  • Change colours, contrast levels and fonts using browser functionality
  • Zoom in up to 400 per cent 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
  • Interact with most of the website using a screen reader (including recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

If you have a disability, AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use.

How accessible this website is

We know from accessibility testing that some parts of this website are not fully accessible. Many of our older PDFs are not fully accessible to screen reader software.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

We're committed to making this website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. If you're having problems using these PDFs please contact us.

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content

The content that is not accessible is listed below together with an explanation.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Images

  • Though most images on the site are fully accessible some of the older images are missing text alternatives, in most cases images are not used to convey information that isn't elsewhere on the page. We are working to resolve this issue.

PDFs

  • The structure of the content is not always available to assistive technology, which makes the content difficult to understand and navigate for users of screen readers. We do use BrowseAloud software which does aid in the text to speech of older PDFs however.
  • The reading order of the content is not always logical, which means some content does not make sense when read out by text-to-speech software.
  • Images do not always have text alternatives, which means some content is not available when using text-to-speech software.

3rd-party content

  • Twitter, Facebook, the sites Google Search engine and NHS widgets are not fully accessible, these 3rd party items are exempt from accessibility guidance.
  • Some errors have not been explained in text, such as the ReCaptcha feature within the Get in Touch section. 
  • Text acting as a heading has not been built using the correct HTML tag.
  • Tools may contain low contrast text and low contrast graph images.

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs do not meet accessibility standards. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they're not essential to providing our services. 

Videos

Some of our older videos do not meet accessibility standards because they do not have captions. We primarily use You Tube to make use of their automated caption service. We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

False Positives

Some issues listed by automated testing facilities such as Google Lighthouse or Axe are not true issues.

  • List items (<li>) are not contained within <ul> or <ol> parent elements is shown as a problem, yet this is because the automated testing facility doesn't account for CSS before: property thus list items are correctly nested.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 24th March 2022.

This website's accessibility will be reviewed on a regular basis. We will update this accessibility statement with any relevant changes.