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Website accessibility statement

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Foundation Trust is commited to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No.2) Accessibility Regulation 2018.

This accessibility statement applies to The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Foundation Trust's website (www.qehkl.nhs.uk).

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% 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)

We try to make website text as clear as possible to understand.

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

How accessible this website is

We know from accessibility reports that parts of this website are not yet fully accessible.

PDFs

Many of our PDFs are not fully accesible to screen reader software and do not fully compy with accessibility regulations.

We are working towards providing all new information leaflets and documents in an accessible HTML format.

Other parts of the website that are not fully accessible

These include:

  • some pages and document attachments are not written in plain English
  • some tables do not have row headings
  • some documents have poor colour contrast
  • not all videos are captioned, some multimedia content doesn't yet have audio or text description
  • links to websites that we do not own or manage and so cannot guarantee their accessibility

We are actively working to address these issues as part of an ongoing programme to improve the accessibility of this website.

Feedback and contact information

Contact us if you have an accessibility query including:

  • if you have any problems accessing information or using this website
  • if you have any positive feedback about this website's accessibility
  • email the Communications team
  • or call 01553 613351 to speak with our Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS)

Enforcement procedure

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the 'accessibility regulations').

If you contact us with a complaint and you are not happy with our response, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 on legislation.gov.uk (the 'accessibility regulations').

Technical information about this website's accessibility

We are committed to making this website accessible in accordance with the accessibility regulations.

Compliance status

This website was checked on 5 November 2024 against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard.

Based on our testing, this site is partially compliant with WCAG 2.2 AA. This means there are some things which are not fully accessible.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reason:

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Podcasts

  • A text alternative (transcript) for audio-only content has not been provided for podcast content (Audio only 1.2.1)

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 (Info and relationships 1.3.1)
  • 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 (Meaningful sequence 1.3.2)
  • Images do not always have text alternatives, which means some content is not available when using text-to-speech software (Text alternatives 1.1.1)

Images

  • Some images are missing altenative text descriptions meaning they are not announced by screen readers (Non-text content 1.1.1)

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Content that is 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. We have plans to remove or replace some of the PDFs with more accessible content alternatives. Wherever possible, we avoid PDFs. Instead we create content as structured web pages in HTML.

Videos

Some of our older videos do not meet accessibility standards because they do not have captions. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix videos published before 23 September 2020.

How we test this website

We use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 level AA to test how accessible our website is.

We use Recite Me Website Accessibility WCAG Checker tools to test our web content for accessibility issues.

On 5 August 2024, the Government Digital Service accessibility monitoring team conducted an audit of a sample of pages on our website, which identified a number of issues requiring action.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We are making sure that accessibility issues highlighted in this statement are being prioritised and fixed. Measures include:

  • training editors on producing more accessible content
  • a principle to move away from new content being produced in PDF
  • plans to remove or replace older PDFs with more accessible content
  • prioritising accessibility remedial work in all new development and improvement projects

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 25 October 2024. It was last reviewed on 25 November 2024.

This website was last tested in November 2024 against the WCAG 2.2 AA standard. This test of a representative sample of pages was carried out using Recite Me Accessibility WCAG Checker tools.

We also used findings from our own testing when preparing this accessibility statement.

We will continue to update this accessibility statement with any relevant changes.