Accessibility Statement

How you can use this website

This accessibility statement applies to East Kent Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust website.

This website is run jointly by the Communications and IT Teams at East Kent 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:

  • Change colours, contrast levels and fonts

  • Increase text size

  • Zoom in up to 300% 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

  • 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.

My Computer My Way has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

We have worked hard to make sure our site is accessible to all. This has involved reviewing content, refining the navigation and making technical changes to ensure we are compliant with WCAG 2.1.

Since the beginning of 2023 we have fixed hundreds of issues allowing screen-readers and keyboard only users to navigate our site more smoothly.

The Silktide Index is recognised as the global accessibility league table. We regularly check our performance on the index as we are striving for continual improvement. You can check the full list of NHS Trusts to see how we compare via the Silktide Index.

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. You can see a full list of any issues we currently know about in the non-accessible content section of this statement.

Accessible Information Standard

We can provide appointment letters and clinical patient information leaflets in other formats.  Please let the service you are a patient of know of any communication or information needs you have related to a disability.  They will then do their best to meet these needs.

This could include appointment letters in large print, Braille, Easy Read or electronically and/or a British Sign Language interpreter, SSE interpreter, Makaton, Deaf/blind manual interpreter or lip-speaker or speech to text reporter at your appointment.  Please let the service know if you require a hearing loop, extra appointment time, a quiet space to wait and be seen, to be accompanied by a carer / family member or to have any other disability related adjustment.  This requirement to make disability related adjustments also applies to carers and parents of patients if they themselves have a disability.

You can access the patient leaflets in Easy Read via our Patient Information Library.

Feedback and contact information

For general enquiries related to accessible information, please contact the Patient Voice and Involvement team: ekhuft.patientvoice@nhs.net or phone 01227 868605

Translating web pages

Our website does not offer a specific translation service, but Google Translate does provide a free and equivalent service. Please see below for steps to translate the East Kent Hospitals website into any given language:

  1. Open a web browser and go to Google Translate. You don't need a Google account to access it, because it's free to all

  2. On the right, choose the language you want to see the website in

  3. Click Translate.

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 ekh-tr.communications@nhs.net

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).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

East Kent 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 form elements such as radio buttons are not clear in the number of options available or will read out different option numbers to the quantity present on the page. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

  • Form components do not adjust to user text spacing changes. This fails WCAG 1.4.12 Text Spacing (AA).

  • On mobile devices, moving through all carousel components causes users to move through all carousel items twice before moving out of the component. Mobile screen reader users must move backwards into the burger menu after having opened it. This fails WCAG 2.4.3 Focus Order (A).

  • The skip to main content link receives focus but does not become visible for mobile users. Mobile screen reader users can navigate the visually obscured page content while the burger menu is expanded. This fails WCAG 2.4.7 Focus Visible (AA).

  • Some form elements such as radio button groups do not have their legends read. The patient information links are generating with unreadable names for screen reader users. YouTube embedder video account links have aria-label and role conflicts. Carousel controls have aria-control conflicts with their assigned values. Some carousel controls are identified only as buttons. This fails WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (A)

We have the following non-accessible content:

Many documents such as board and council of governors papers, staff guidance and policies are not accessible in several ways including missing text alternatives and missing document structure. We are looking into making all our documents more accessible and aim to fix these by end of December 2024.

This is not a comprehensive list as we are still identifying some accessibility issues. If you find an issue that we have yet to identify, please contact us using one of the routes described in the ‘Reporting accessibility problems with this website’ section of this statement.

Disproportionate burden

At this time, we have made no claims of disproportionate burden.

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

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. Many of these documents are aimed at an internal clinician audience but are published on the website for ease of access and transparency.

Not all of these documents are fully accessible. We are currently working on fixing essential documents or replacing them with accessible HTML web pages where possible. This work will be completed by end of December 2024. Not all documents will be fixed as some predate the regulations or are exempted for other reasons. If you need accessibility adjustments for a document please contact us using the methods above.

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. We are not currently aware of having any documents that fall into this category.

Third party content

Some of the content hosted on our website or linked to by us is created by third parties. We have no control over the accessibility of these documents and encourage third parties we work with to make their documents as accessible as possible. If you need accessibility adjustments for a document that may be controlled by a third party, please contact us using the methods above.

Video content

We do not plan to add captions to existing pre-recorded video content that was published before the 23rd September 2020. This content is exempt from the regulations. All new video content we produce will have appropriate captions, audio descriptions and transcripts as necessary.

Online Maps

Maps embedded from digital mapping services such as Google Maps, and maps made available in formats such as PDF - are exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations where they are used for non-navigational purposes. However, we will always attempt to provide as much related information as possible in text, e.g. postcodes and directions.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We plan to identify and fix issues on a continuous basis.

  • Work is continuing to remove documents which aren't needed as soon as possible. Where information is still required, we plan to fix the document or republish it in HTML format.

  • We are aware we have a number of other non-accessible documents such as board and council of governors papers, staff guidance and policies. We are currently working on fixing these documents, initially the work was due to be completed by end of December 2023, however, due to the volume of documents identified, we now aim to complete this by end of December 2024.

  • There are still some Patient Information leaflets which are not fully accessible. We aim to have fixed these by end of December 2024.

  • If you require one of these documents in an accessible format, please contact ekh-tr.communications@nhs.net

  • There are some documents designed for printing. This includes Our Hospitals magazine.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 10/07/2023. It was last reviewed on 01/08/2024.

This website was last tested on 11/06/2023. The test was carried out by All Able Ltd.

A representative sample of pages of the website were tested along with a sample of the documents from each area of the website. Testing was composed of a mixture of manual, semi-automated and assistive technology testing.