Accessibility statement

This statement applies to content published on the www.royalcornwall.nhs.uk/ domains. It does not apply to any other domains with associated names or subdomains. Please view individual sites for applicable accessibility statements.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. That is why we have built and integrated a bespoke accessibility toolbar to help users use our site. View our guide on how to effectively use this software.

This website is managed by the Web Team at the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust. It is designed to be used by as many people as possible. The text should be clear and simple to understand. You should be able to:

• Change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• Increase font 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

Some of our content is technical and is sometimes aimed at medical professionals, we use technical terms where there is no easier wording we could use without changing what the text means.

If you have a disability, AbilityNet has advice to help you make your device easier to use.

How accessible this website is

Over the past eight months we have worked hard on making 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. We are happy to be currently regarded as one of the most accessible NHS trust in England by specialists such as Silktide Index.

Since the beginning of 2021 we have fixed hundreds of issues allowing screen-readers and keyboard only users to navigate our site much more smoothly.

With this in mind, we are always looking to improve accessibility and there are some parts of this website which are not fully accessible.

Examples include:

• some pages and document attachments are not clearly written
• we have a large number of old publication documents which are in PDF format, and haven’t been designed for accessibility
• A few links are not optimised for accessibility

Please Note: This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of fixes, as some accessibility issues are still being identified.

How we tested this website

In order to ensure our site is compliant and user friendly for as many people as possible, we have had extensive manual and automated testing carried out by Test Partners (This link will take you away from our site). We have used tools such as SortSite and Wave to ensure compliance as well as acquiring software from Silktide (This link will take you away from our site) to constantly monitor our site for compliance.

This website is constantly being tested for compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines V2.1 level A, level AA and AAA where possible, these tests are being carried out internally.

Request content in an accessible format

If you need information in a different format, please contact the Patient Experience Team and let us know. Please provide the following details:

• the web address (URL) of the content
• your name and email address
• the format you need, for example, audio CD, braille, BSL or large print, accessible PDF

Reporting accessibility or technical problems

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website.

If you find any problems or accessibility issues that are not listed on this page, please contact rcht.webteam@nhs.net.

Accessibility, content and media enquiries

If you have any questions about accessibility compliance, page or document content or media enquiries generally please contact the Communications Team.

Policies, guidelines and documents

If you have any questions about accessibility compliance, page or document content or media enquiries generally please contact the Corporate Records Manager.

Enforcement procedure

If you contact us with a complaint and you’re 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 (the ‘accessibility regulations’).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This website is compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

Non-accessible content

The content that does not meet accessibility guidelines 2.1 is outlined below with details of:

Where it fails the success criteria

Identified issues:

• Very few iFrames have empty title attributes. These titles must be added overwise this fails WCAG 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value)
• Very few list elements have direct children that are not allowed inside ‘li’ elements, or ‘li’ is missing. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships)
• Combine adjacent links with the same destination. WCAG A 1.1.1

This is not a comprehensive list as some accessibility issues are still being identified.

Issues with technology

The vast majority of our website works correctly on any web technology.

However, this website no longer supports Internet Explorer, as this browser is now at the end of its lifecycle. Read more information about the withdrawal of IE support.

Disproportionate burden

The organization is planning a new minimum AA standard web presence for accessibility regulations compliance to represent the proposed organisational integration with Cornwall Partnership Foundation Trust.

Due to the size of our organization, and available resources for the planned integration it is a disproportionate burden to update previously published content.

The timeline for this new integrated web presence is tentatively April 2022.

PDFs and other documents

Many documents are not accessible in several ways including missing text alternatives and missing document structure. We are looking into making all our documents more accessible.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

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

This statement was prepared on 13th September 2020. It was last updated on 18th August 2021.