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Accessibility

This accessibility statement applies to southtees.nhs.uk.

This accessibility statement applies to southtees.nhs.uk.

This website is run by South Tees 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:

  • Zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

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

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • Some older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software

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:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you as soon as possible.

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: [email protected]

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 you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Find out how to get in touch with our hospitals via our contact us page.

Find out how to contact our patient experience team via our concerns, comments and compliments page.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

South Tees 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 2.2 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

PDFs and non-HTML documents

Some documents are not accessible in a number of ways including missing text alternatives and missing document structure. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content and 1.3.1 Info and Relationships 3.1.1 and Language of Page and 2.4.2 Page titled and 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum).

We will be reviewing PDF documents that are essential for our services and aim to convert these to accessible resource pages before 2025. Where possible we are replacing any new PDFs or Word documents with HTML pages or an accessible PDF.

If you require a PDF document in an accessible format such as large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email [email protected]

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

PDFs and non-HTML documents

Some of our PDFs are essential to providing our services. For example, forms published as Word documents. By 2025, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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, we do not plan to fix past copies of newsletters and archive meeting agendas.

Disproportionate burden assessment

We have examined documents published after 2012 and we’ve assessed the cost of fixing these documents. We believe that doing so would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations.

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of any document from this website in a more accessible format, please email [email protected] to tell us what format you require. It will help us if you let us know what type of assistive technology you use.

We have carried out a disproportionate burden assessment on our trust publication documents, including board papers and annual reports. As an NHS Foundation Trust, we are legally obliged to publish these documents on our trust website.

Scope

As of September 2018, accessibility legislation states that public sector websites must publish content in an accessible format. Board papers and annual reports are currently published on our website as PDFs.

Benefits of creating an accessible version

The benefits of creating an HTML version of these documents would be:

  • Fully accessible versions for all users to access
  • Documents that are more easily searchable and indexable

Burden

  • Each document would require several hours of work to be recreated in a fully accessible version (estimated to take between 2 and 40 hours per document, depending on length and complexity, plus any additional sign-off)
  • These documents are all officially published documents and publishing new versions would require detailed checking and a lengthy formal sign-off process
  • Most of these documents contain complex elements which are difficult to convert, such as tables, graphs, and diagrams

Other factors

Also, other factors relevant to the decision are that:

  • Interest in these documents is low and few people access them. As an NHS Foundation Trust we are obliged to publish them
  • To date we have not been asked for accessible versions of any of these documents
  • We will always assist with accessible versions should we receive requests for them
  • The cost of conversion for existing documents would be in excess of £30,000 with a further £8,000 cost for new documents annually.

Assessment

Having considered the estimated cost involved in creating HTML versions, along with the low amount of page views and downloads these documents receive, we have concluded that the work involved would be a poor use of staff time. This represents a disproportionate burden on the organisation.

Where possible, for newer documents we will continue to create assessable HTML versions, alongside the standard PDF document.

We will also explore further training and the implementation of software solutions by the end of 2024/25.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 11 January 2022. It was last reviewed on 29 January 2024.

This website is tested annually. It was last tested on 18 January 2024. The test was carried out by MIXD.

As our website contains thousands of pages, we selected a sample of pages to test based on average use, volume of traffic, and content type. We tested the following pages as they contain our main features used across the site:

If you require the full accessibility test report, please email [email protected]