Accessibility statement

Accessibility statement for NECS Medicines Optimisation website

This website is run by North of England Commissioning Support Unit. 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
  • 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.

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:

  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • live video streams do not have captions
  • there’s a limit to how far you can magnify the map on our ‘contact us’ page

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

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

  • email moadmin@nhs.net
  • call 0191 374 2714

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in [number] days.

If you cannot view or there is no map on our ‘contact us’ page, call or email us (https://medicines.necsu.nhs.uk/contact-us/) for directions.

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: [provide details of how to report these issues to your organisation, and contact details for the unit or person responsible for dealing with these reports].

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).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

We provide a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.

Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

Find out how to contact us https://medicines.necsu.nhs.uk/contact-us/.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

North of England Commissioning Support Unit is committed to making its 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

  • Non-distinguishable landmarks
  • Content not included in landmarks
  • Colour contrast is insufficient

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs 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).

Some of our PDFs and Word 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. By September 2020, 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 [example of non-essential document].

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Live video

Live video streams do not have captions. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions – live).

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 23/11/2020. The test was carried out by North of England Commissioning Support Unit using Siteimprove

All pages were tested.

We tested:

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Testing by Siteimprove will be carried out a regular intervals to ensue ongoing compliance.

This statement was prepared on 11/10/2019. It was last updated on 23/11/2020.