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Accessibility Statement

Accessibility Statement

This Accessibility Statement covers York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust website www.yorkhospitals.nhs.uk.

This website is run by York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation 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).

This website is speech enabled with ReachDeck for those who have difficulties reading web pages. You will find the ReachDeck button at the bottom of each website page.  By using ReachDeck you will also be able to create and download audio files from our website pages and play them on another device if you wish.

There are also a number of customisation options for your browser and device that could help you use this website more effectively:

CSS & XHTML
We use CSS (cascading style sheets) for all layouts.  No tables are used for layout purposes.  We use valid XHTML1.1 and valid CSS as specified by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Resizing text/zooming
If you find the text on our website is too small, you can resize it accordingly.

For Internet Explorer 6
Choose View > Text Size from the menu to resize the text.

For Internet Explorer 7 and 8
Choose Page > Text Size from the menu to resize the text.
Or choose Page > Zoom from the menu to resize the entire page.

For Internet Explorer 9
Choose Tools > Zoom > Zoom in

For Mozilla Firefox
Choose View > Zoom from the menu. If you select the 'Zoom Text Only' option, only the text will be re-sized; otherwise the entire page will be resized.

For Google Chrome
Choose Settings > Zoom from the menu.  Currently Chrome only supports page resizing and not text-only resizing.

All other browsers should be able to resize the text directly from the menu bar.

Or in many browsers, you can zoom by holding CTRL and pressing + or - . Some browsers also support zooming by holding CTRL and using the mouse scroll wheel. Please see your specific browser help pages if you are having difficulty.

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

We’ve made the website text as simple as possible to understand.  Where we have used an acronym that wouldn't easily be explained by searching online, we have added them to our glossary page.


How accessible this website is

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website but we know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • some tables do not have row headers
  • some of the non-decorative images and buttons do not have appropriate text equivalent
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • many of our videos are embedded from YouTube and may feature labelling from YouTube itself, which is incorrect or not sufficiently descriptive
  • some content is embedded in our website, such as maps and videos, and you cannot easily scale these on screen (but you can open a full screen version)
  • you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader.

Feedback and contact information

You can request information be put into different formats (or languages) by emailing access@york.nhs.uk. Our facilities helpdesk will check if DA Languages or MySight York or other partners can provide EasyRead.

Our Learning Disability Liaison team can also generate easy-read letters etc for patients.

We will consider your request and get back to you within 21 days.

British Sign Language users can contact us using a British Sign Language video interpreter, via the InterpretersLive! service, provided by Sign Solutions.  The InterpretersLive! service is available on-demand.  You can also pre-book BSL video interpreters and other types of remote communication support for any time and anywhere via any video platform of your choice.


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, please contact the Communications Team.  We will need to know the details of the page you are looking at, information you thought should be clearer and anything else you think would help us to improve it.


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).


Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

All our hospitals have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter. Get in touch with us.


Technical information about this website’s accessibility

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation 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 the non-compliance and exemptions listed below.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

1. Some of our page titles are long, causing a technical fail on descriptive titles for web pages, which requires titles to be short. In most cases, this is related to names of clinical procedures.

We are not going to fix this, as the content is still understandable, and changing titles might cause compliance issues.

2. Some images and buttons 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 non-decorative images by December 2022.  The WCAG criteria makes a distinction about non-text content that is “pure decoration” and “used only for visual formatting”, so long as it is implemented in a way that it can be ignored by assistive technology like screen readers.

When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

3. Some images contain text that does not meet minimum colour contrast requirements.  Images with insufficient colour contrast are not compliant with WCAG guideline 1.4.3.

We will correct the contrast on these images over time as we review each page.

4. Some of our videos do not have accurate captions. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2 (captions (prerecorded)).

All our videos are first uploaded to YouTube, which has a system of automatically captioning videos. Sometimes the captions do not accurately capture what the people in the videos are saying.

By December 2022 we will make sure the captions are edited so that they are correct.  When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use video captions meets accessibility standards.

5. We are aware that some link text doesn't make sense when read on its own (for example 'click here') and on some pages there are multiple links with the same link text but different destinations on one page. This can introduce confusion for keyboard and screen reader users. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (link purpose (in context)).

We plan to fix this as we renew and refresh each page of the website.

6. Some of the page content is not labelled as being in the body, main, header or footer sections of the page. This may lead to confusing or inaccurate screen reader output. This does not meet WCAG success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships).

We plan to fix this as we renew and refresh each page of the website.


Disproportionate burden

Navigation and accessing information

There is no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option). This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.1 (bypass blocks).

Our website is based on an open-source content management system and we believe it would be a disproportionate burden to amend this.  We will continue to work with our third-party CMS supplier to understand whether this can be addressed in a proportionate way.


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

This section covers issues that we do not need to fix right now.  The law calls these exemptions.

PDFs and other documents

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.

Some of our older PDFs and documents don’t meet accessibility standards.

We don't intend to make some documents that are non essential to providing our services accessible. For example, we do not plan to fix:

  • Excel spreadsheets of our staffing figures

  • Excel spreadsheets of information covering our transparency spending

  • Annual reports (PDF).

However, we know some of our PDFs and other documents are essential to providing our services, such as our Patient Information leaflets. We plan to replace these key documents with new PDFs which meet accessibility standards as soon as they due for renewal.

Any new PDFs or documents we publish that are essential to accessing our services will meet accessibility standards.

Useful information about ways to make Acrobat documents more accessible is provided on Adobe’s website.  Further information can be found on Adobe pages on accessibility.


Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 14 September 2020 and reviewed on 30 March 2023.

This website was last tested w/c 5 October 2020 Smarter Digital Services.

An audit of web accessibility was conducted using a combination of semi-automated evaluation tools and manual evaluation.  The level of the audit was to WCAG2.1AA standard.  The results are based on an audit conducted on the following date(s): 5 to 9 October 2020 on the templates used across the website.  Content was selected to ensure a good representation of different pages, templates and components were tested, as well as key content and user journeys.  The finding of this audit can be read in full here.

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

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