Accessibility

Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This accessibility statement applies to the NUH public website. This statement was last reviewed on Tuesday 15 August 2023. The next review will be August 2024.

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 also try to make the website text as simple as possible to understand.

If you have a disability, visit the AbilityNet website for 'how to' guides to make your device easier to use.

We also provide an inbuilt assistive technology called ReciteMe, enabling all websites visitors to customise their experience through a range of option to suit their online accessibility and language needs.

The accessibility tool provides text size alterations, various contrast settings and a translation tool with over 100 languages.


ReciteMe - Assistive software

We use ReciteMe on our website to allow visitors to customise the website in a way that works best to them. To use ReciteMe, please select ‘Enable Recite’ from the Accessibility button at the top of every page or click the ReciteMe logo in the footer of every page. Its features include:

  • Screen reader - allows the text on the webpage to be read out loud.
  • Translation - allows the text on the page or document to be translated.
  • Reading aides - allows the text to change contrast, use a ruler, screen mask, magnifier, margins, and use a dictionary.
  • Styling - Users are able to customise the website's colour scheme as well as the text, font style, size, colour, and spacing.

For more information, visit www.reciteme.com

AccessAble

AccessAble logo AccessAble are an award-winning disability organisation that has been in operation since 2000. They produce online access guides in a great deal of detail on a huge range of venues including the QMC and the City Hospital.

During our initial survey, surveyors from AccessAble spent several months at our hospitals surveying corridors, wards, parking facilities, clinics and other public areas of the hospital for ease of wheelchair access, WC facilities, access to interpreters, large print information leaflets and many other criteria.

Access guides for:

Nottingham City Hospital

Queens Medical Centre

Deaf or hard of hearing?

If you need to call Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, there is a service that can help, Relay UK.

Search for Relay UK on the App Store for iPhone or iPad and at Google Play for Android devices and then simply follow the instructions.

We hope that by downloading the App, NUH will be able to provide a seamless call experience for our deaf care customers.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like a PDF, easy read document or braille: email Digitalcomms@nuh.nhs.uk and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

If you require information in an audio format or in large print, you can do this by enabling the ReciteMe tool on the home page under accessibility tools.

How accessible this website is

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible and we are committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

In particular many of our documents are in PDF format and are partially accessible.

This website currently partially conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

We are currently reviewing a variety of accessibility auditors/audit tools to complete an audit of our website. This will involve reviewing content and making technical changes to ensure we are confirming to WCAG 2.1 AA Standard.

Once an audit has taken place this statement will be updated.

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 email Digitalcomms@nuh.nhs.uk to report this. This helps us improve.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

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

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliance(s) and the exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

We do not yet know the full extent of non-accessible content until a new audit has taken place. However, we are aware of the below issues:

  • Non-text content: 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 ensure all images have alt-text included by the next review.
  • PDF files: We have more than 5,000 PDF files on our website that are partially compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AA Standard. Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services or discharging our legal duties. For example, PDFs with information on how users can access our services, Trust Board papers, and Annual Reports are formatted as PDFs. Wherever possible, we will avoid using PDFs, and instead create content as structured web pages. Some pages have links to PDFs from other third-party websites that include patient information, which we have no control over.
  • Not all of our content reaches our target reading age of 12-years old.

This is not a comprehensive list as we are still identifying some accessibility issues.

Disproportionate burden

Trust Board Papers. These PDF documents regularly contain hundreds of pages which contain scanned images, large reports that have been sourced from multiple departments. They are also compiled and uploaded only hours before they are legally required to be available to the public, a delay would risk a fine or a cancelled public meeting.The small numbers of views on these documents doesn’t justify the cost of time, effort and resource to fix them.

We are reviewing these PDFs with the aim to make them accessible in the future.

We advise all interested parties to contact digitalcomms@nuh.nhs.uk to talk through any information that might be required.

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

Our website contains some third-party content that we do not have control over and are not responsible for the accessibility of this content, but we endeavour to work with the third party to improve its accessibility. This may include:

  • links to non-NUH websites
  • content or functionality embedded in, but not a part of our website. This includes
    • Embedded job search boards on Current jobs | NUH
    • The CQC embedded widget in the footer of the website
  • content hosted on other websites, such as social media sites
  • Google Translate feedback form - We are aware that the google form when asking the user to rate the translation does not meet the following accessibility guidelines:
    • Identify the purpose of fields programmatically
    • Ensure form controls have labels
    • Ensure controls change appearance when they are selected
    • Add a submit button to all forms

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Our accessibility roadmap is currently being developed to show how and when we plan to improve accessibility on this website.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

A sample of the website was tested in May 2023 by Government Digital Service, against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard.

Based on their testing, this site was partially compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA. This means there are some things which are not fully accessible. They used a mixture of simple manual checks and automated tests to find only the most common barriers to users with accessibility needs.

  • Manual checks included using each page without a mouse, viewing the page at different zoom settings, and simulating viewing the page on a small screen.
  • The automated tests were completed using the latest version of Axe.
  • Tests were completed using different settings in the Google Chrome browser on macOS with a 13 inch screen.

These issues were fixed and no further issues were found. Read the GDS report.

Supporting Information

When we were developing this website with our website provider “VerseOne” they ensured that the content was checked prior to “going live” by experienced users of adaptive technology for access by people who have

  • No vision
  • Low vision
  • Colour blindness
  • Dyslexia
  • Deafness
  • Mobility Impairment
  • Learning Difficulties

Our website includes some built-in Accessibility Checks – For example – if we try to publish a photograph without including a description of what’s on it, the website content management system alerts us to that fact and makes sure that we do.

Our website includes the facility for people using it to be able to change the contrast of the site and view in either black and blue font on a yellow background or yellow and blue font on a black background. The button to activate this function can be found after clicking on the Accessibility Tools box at the top right of each webpage, which usually is highlighted in pink.

Browser compatibility

This site has been developed and tested in several desktop and mobile device internet browsers using Responsive Web Design techniques. This means that you should be able to comfortably view the site on either a computer screen, smartphone or tablet. Certain aspects of this site will not work in browsers more than 3-4 years old. We very much recommend upgrading your internet browser to a more recent release.

Other languages

Visitors to our site who wish to access information in other languages may use the Google Translate® service or ReciteMe toolbar, which is available on every page in our website header under the accessibility tools button. The Google Translator and ReciteMe toolbar is a third party service and any use of its translation services is subject to its rules or requirements.

The translations are made through an automated process which may not result in accurate or precise translations. Anyone using the these tools does so at his or her own risk and the user accepts the legal implications of any shortcomings or differences in the translation.