Accessibility

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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

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

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.

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.