Accessibility Statement

Accessibility Statement for the Whittington Health NHS Trust website

This accessibility statement applies to this Whittington Health NHS Trust website at
https://www.whittington.nhs.uk

Our commitment to web accessibility standards

Whittington Health NHS Trust is committed to producing a website and web resources that can be accessed by all users.  We want as many people as possible to be able to use our website.  Therefore, we're continuously working to make this site as accessible and usable as possible for all abilities and disabilities.  This includes older audiences and those with visual, hearing, cognitive or motor impairments.

How accessible this website is

  • We try to make our website text simple to understand, by using plain English wherever appropriate.
  • We use subtitles for media content wherever possible.
  • We rarely use data tables in page text, preferring in-line text layouts responsive to various display sizes.

We also try to make our site easy to use with assistive technologies by using:
 
  • easier-to-read colours
  • larger fonts
  • keyboard-only navigation

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)
 
Not every  Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word format document linked on this site is fully accessible to screen reader software.  Given our available resources, we have made, and continue to make, these documents as accessible as we can.  In summary, in these documents:
 
  • properties such as language and title may be missing or inaccurate
  • there is not always a complete logical structure based on tags and headings
  • tables and lists may not always have headers or other elements identified in full
  • images may not always have text alternatives

Wherever possible, we avoid publishing documents in PDF format.  Instead we replace this content with (or create new content as) structured web pages instead, based on HMTL and conforming to modern web accessibility standards.
 
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 online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • text will not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window
  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader

Feedback and contact information

Reporting wesbite accessibility problems

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 the Whittington Health NHS Trust Communications Team:
 

Information in alternative forms

If you need information on this website in an alternative language or format, please contact our Communications Team.

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).  They are an independent advice service which can advise you on what to do next.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

Whittington Health 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 and exemptions listed below.
 
Where complying with the regulations would be a disproportionate burden, we conduct assessments and publish them on our disproportionate burden register.

Non-accessible content

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

1. Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Many of our PDFs do not contain the document default language

Detailed information will appear here shortly.

Many of our PDFs do not contain a relevant document title

Detailed information will appear here shortly.

Many of our PDFs have figures, diagrams or tables without a text alternative

Detailed information will appear here shortly.

Many of our PDFs do not contain fully tagged content or the correct tab order

Detailed information will appear here shortly.

Many of our PDFs do not identify headings, lists or data tables correctly

Detailed information will appear here shortly.

2. Content is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Issues with Technology

The vast majority of our website works correctly on any web technology.
 
For security reasons, we only support TLS 1.2 and higher security protocols, and this means that some older browsers will not show the site.
 
How our site looks and work is based on HTML5, and we test for and support the following browsers:
 

We also test in the Lynx browser to ensure that the site renders correctly for non-screen users.
 
You may experience unexpected behaviour in other browsers, although we use fully validated code which should work on any modern (HTML5) browser.
 
Internet Explorer no longer supported
Whittington Health NHS Trust no longer supports Internet Explorer, as this browser is now at the end of its lifecycle.

Issues with Links

We are aware of the following issues within the links on our site:
 
  • some link text doesn't make sense when read on its own (for example 'click here')
  • on some pages there are multiple links with the same link text but different destinations
  • many older PDF files contain broken links which do not resolve - we do not intend to resolve these as it is a disproportionate burden for files which are no longer in active use
 
We scan the site weekly for broken links, and look to fix them as soon as they are identified.
 
Our Communications Team are working through the links which don't make sense on their own, and we aim to have fixed these by March 2025.

Issues with PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDF documents 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 - for example, archive meeting papers.

Issues with Images and Videos

We strive to make all of our content accessible. We are aware of the following issues with images and video on our site:
 
  • Video content uses automated closed captioning and transcripting, and this is often inaccurate. By March 2024 we will review these captions and ensure their accuracy manually.
  • Some of the images on our site are complex diagrams where suitable alt text is not possible. A list of these images is below. By March 2025 we intend to have reviewed all of these images, and where possible will have converted them to accessible format such as SVG, used a different visualisation method, built the visualisation in HTML5, or added detailed description text to the page
Some of our older videos may 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. We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Issues with third party embedded content

Third party content which is embedded into our site may not fully conform to WCAG 2.1 AA. Embedded content we use comprises:
 

Issues with text and content

There are some issues with text and content which we are aware of:
 
  • not all of our content reaches our target reading age of 12 years old. We are resolving this as content comes up through its review cycle, and this should be largely complete by March 2025.
  • 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 legal or formal names for publications. We are not going to fix this, as the content is still understandable, and changing titles might cause compliance issues.

Issues with interactive tools

Navigation and accessing information

How we test this website

What we're doing to improve accessibility

Internal reviews are conducted on content published to this website and the design system components used to construct the site. The accessibility of this website will be reviewed on a quarterly basis and we will update this statement with any relevant changes.
 
Work is ongoing to:
 
  • Publish content in HTML format wherever possible, rather than as PDF or other formats.
  • Inform staff of the importance of accessibility, and guide them how to make their documents accessible.
  • Review and update existing published PDF documents to make them fully accessible, prioritised by frequency of public access.
  • Test newly-created documents for accessibility before they are published, and repair any issues - unless it is in the interest of our patients and staff to publish information before the standards can be met in full.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was first prepared on 25th May 2018.
It was last reviewed on 24th April 2024.
 
It will be next reviewed on 2nd September 2024.
 
This website was last tested during March 2024.  Both manual and automated tests were carried out by the Whittington Health NHS Trust Web Team and our third party website developers. To test, we used the tools:
 
 

When deciding on a sample of pages to test, we chose based on:
 
  • our most popular pages
  • pages that gave an example of each template
  • pages that included images and video

Website accessibility resources

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops standards and support materials to help understanding and implementation of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1:
 
 
AbilityNet - help in making your computer work best for you, including "how to" guides to make your device easier to use if you have a disability.

Accessibility Statement update

Whittington Health NHS Trust is currently in the process of reviewing the accessibility of this website.
 
 The Accessibility Statement information on this page is also being reviewed and updated in conjunction with this.
 
Further information will appear here shortly.
6 October 2023

Disproportionate Burden Assessment

Last updated24 Apr 2024
Working on it!