Accessibility Statement

This Accessibility Statement covers the York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust website (www.yorkhospitals.nhs.uk).  This website is maintained by York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

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 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).

This website is speech-enabled with ReachDeck for those who have difficulties reading web pages.

Using the ReachDeck tool you should be able to:

• have any text read out loud when you hover over it or highlight a paragraph
• translate any text into 99 different languages
• display word meaning through the picture dictionary
• focus on reading one passage at a time using a screen mask
• create a simplified view of any webpage.

If you have a disability, search AbilityNet for "how to" guides to make your device easier to use.

How accessible this website is

We know that parts of this website are not fully accessible.

• you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
• most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• some of our videos do not have captions
• some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
• links to websites or software that we do not own or manage and so cannot guarantee their accessibility.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

• email yhs-tr.communications.team@nhs.net
• call 01904 724501

We will consider your request and aim to get back to you within 7 days.

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, contact yhs-tr.communications.team@nhs.net.  This helps us improve.

Enforcement procedure

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

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 to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

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.  For new content, we ensure that video captions meet accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden

Some PDFs do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they are accessible to a screen reader.  This does not meet WCAG 2.2 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value) and 2.4.2 (page titled).

We have assessed the costs and resource implications of ensuring all historical documents on our website are fully accessible and we believe that this would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations.  We are committed to using our resources to update this historical content over time, and we also offer clear points of contact on this page for visitors having difficulty using our website or requesting information in different formats, such as accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording, or braille.

We are unable to make our board papers accessible currently.  Board papers are uploaded to the website as PDF documents numbering hundreds of pages.  These pages contain scanned images and large reports sourced from multiple authors and services. They are compiled and uploaded just before they are legally required to be publicly available and any delay due to making them accessible would risk a fine or a cancelled public meeting.

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

PDFs and other documents

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services.  For example, we do not plan to fix annual reports and Board papers.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Our accessibility roadmap shows how we have improved accessibility on this website, and we continue to work to address the points listed above.

We are systematically reviewing PDFs and PDF titles across each page, or when there is a change to a page.  We are also reviewing the process by which PDFs are created and named within the Trust to ensure any accessibility issues are solved before uploading to the website, to ensure we meet the standard in the future.  We aim to complete this work by December 2025.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was updated on 21 May 2024.

This website's accessibility will be reviewed on a regular basis, and we will continue to update this accessibility statement with any relevant changes.

This website was last tested in full w/c 5 October 2020 by 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.