Accessibility Statement

Last Updated 16.00 02/10/2023

At Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust, we are committed to making the content on our website accessible to all our users. We always endeavour to be compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 and aim to follow best practices in the world of web.

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
  • zoom in 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 are always working to make the website text as simple as possible to understand.

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

 
Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. If you cannot access parts of this website or if you need information on this website in a different format, either:

 
Technical information about this websites accessibility

We are committed to making our website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below:

 
Non accessible content

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

 
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
  • 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 add text alternatives for all images as soon as possible. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.
  • We need to add a description to each page so that links provide more detail to the user.
  • We need to ensure that the text used for links adequately informs the user where the link will take them.
 

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

 

Documents on our website

Many of our older PDF and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value) and some of these documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. We plan to make these documents accessible as soon as possible.

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDF or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to make older Board of Directors meeting papers, board assurance committee meeting papers accessible.

 

Video content

Our videos do not have captions. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions).

We do not plan to add captions to existing videos because video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations if it was published before 23 September 2020.

 

How we plan to test this website

This website is subject to a planned accessibility audit..

In addition to the accessibility compliance of this website, there are some settings and options available to you on your computer, which can help you further to enhance your web browsing experience including this website.

 

Browsers

Our website has been developed to work well with the following modern browsers:

  • Internet Explorer (IE) 7.0 onwards
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Google Chrome
  • Safari by Apple

 

Browser settings

There are a number of settings available within each browser which can help you as a user to customise your browsing experience to an extent, according to your needs. These settings are provided by different browser manufacturers and can vary from each other.

Following are some of the most common options in the modern-day browsers, which you can use to configure your browsing experience to better suit your needs:

Zoom in/out

In most browsers, you can use the provided menus (top) or a combination of shortcut keys on your keyboard to zoom in or zoom out on any website. Zoom in will magnify the website for you regardless of its style and formatting.

Shortcut key combination for this normally is:

  • Zoom in: CTRL and + keys
  • Zoom out: CTRL and - keys

Text size increase/decrease

There is also an option to increase/decrease the size of the text displayed on a webpage. This option is also found in most of the modern-day browsers.

Contrast, font and more accessibility options

There are further options in the browsers for controlling the level of contrast, styles of fonts and ways to select some rules which can override the website styles and use your own styles. These need to be used carefully and after some testing, you may find the best combination for your personal needs.

Language/translation

Various tools can be used by developers to produce copies of the website in different languages, but the most common, free and easy one to use by site users is Google Translation.  Using this service by Google, you can see the translated versions of the whole websites or simply use this service to translate some relevant words from one language to another. Please note this is a service provided by Google and they have the overall control on the number of available languages for translation and any other terms and conditions.

Screen readers and talking browsers

There are a number of options for you as a website user to ‘hear’ the content on a website if in case you have difficulties in reading the information on the pages. Very useful and comprehensive information about the screen readers and talking browsers can be found at An introduction to screen readers | AbilityNet.

Document readers/viewers

Most of the documents on this website are published in a PDF format and you may find it easier to have a PDF Reader (free software) installed on your computer. The PDF Reader software will ensure you are able to open these PDF documents and read through them and it will also enable to save/print them for later use.

A free version of Adobe PDF Reader can be downloaded and installed from the manufacturer’s website - http://get.adobe.com/uk/reader 

You may find that some documents on this website are not in the PDF format and these could be in Microsoft Word/Excel format. If you don't have the correct software installed for viewing these documents, you may look into some free third-party tools available online. If you think you are having any issues with any of these documents, please contact us via email at lhnt.lchsecomms@nhs.net and we will endeavour to help you in sorting this out for you (contact details on the right).

If you have any further questions in relation to accessibility on this website, you can contact the Trust’s Communications team via lhnt.lchsecomms@nhs.net.

For more comprehensive and user-friendly information about web accessibility, we recommend you visit the BBC's my web my way website.