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Accessibility

Our website has been designed to be easy to use for as many people as possible, regardless of disability or impairment.

Accessibility statement for enherts-tr.nhs.uk

This accessibility statement applies to enherts-tr.nhs.uk.

This website is run by East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust. 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 (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

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

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • Some of our images are missing text alternatives (alt-text)
  • Some images of text are used across the site that might be difficult to interpret using screen reader software

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: communications.enh-tr@nhs.net.

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

East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust 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 version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. These do not meet the following criteria: 

  • 1.3.1 Info and relationships
  • 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)
  • 1.4.5 Images of text
  • 1.4.12 Text spacing
  • 2.4.6 Headings and labels

We plan to fix these by December 2021. 

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). We plan to add text alternatives for all images by 1 June 2021.

Some images of text are used across the site that might be difficult to interpret using screen reader software. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.5 (images of text). We plan to remove or add text alternatives for all images by 1 June 2021.

Disproportionate burden

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website. Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal.

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By December 2021, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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. For example, we do not plan to fix Trust research publications 2016.

Videos

We plan to add captions to all video content on our website, hosted on our YouTube channel.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Our accessibility roadmap shows how and when we plan to improve accessibility on this website.

We are continuously working to address the points listed above.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 4th January 2021. It was last reviewed on 6th January 2021.

This website was last tested on 2nd January 2020. The test was carried out by our trusted agency.

As our website contains thousands of pages, we selected a sample of pages to test based on average use, volume of traffic, and content type. We tested the following pages as they contain our main features used across the site:

We tested:

You can read the full accessibility test report.

Page last updated: 06 January 2021