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Accessibility

Accessibility Statement for the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust website

This statement applies to content on the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital website - https://www.lhch.nhs.uk

This website is run by the Communications Department at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital 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
  • navigate some of the website using speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (for example, ReachDeck)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. In areas, there may be medical terminology used.

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. For example:

  • many documents in PDF format are not accessible
  • some pages and document attachments are not written in plain English
  • some images do not have a text alternative that clearly describe the information or function represented by them
  • site accordions (drop downs) are not fully accessible to screen readers
  • some heading elements are not consistent

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 in 5 working days.

If you cannot view the map on our Maps & Directions page, call or email us for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this site

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 the Trust’s Communication Department by email to corporatecommunications@lhch.nhs.uk

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.

Some of 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 by visiting the contact us page.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital 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

  1. Heading markup is used in different ways - WCAG 2.2 / F43: Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to using structural markup in a way that does not represent relationships in the content.
  2. Our accordions are modifying aria roles labels in the code in a way that may affect screen readers - WCAG 2.1 F43: Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to using structural markup in a way that does not represent relationships in the content.
  3. There are tables in some of our PDF documents that are not correctly marked up - WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships: Tables.
  4. Some of our PDFs have issues with page titles WCAG 2.4.2, and with Page language WCAG 3.1.1 and with Non-text content WCAG 1.1.1
  5. Our accordions contain lists that are not structured correctly - WCAG 2.1 F43: Failure of Success Criterion 1.3.1 due to using structural markup in a way that does not represent relationships in the content.
  6. Our logo bar contains arrows that are not focusable - WCAG 4.1.2 Failure of Success Criterion to ensure that Assistive Technologies (AT) can gather information about, activate (or set) and keep up to date on the status of user interface controls in the content.
  7. A sidebar element that appears on several pages contains an id attribute that is not unique - WCAG 2.1 / F70: Failure of Success Criterion 4.1.1 due to incorrect use of start and end tags or attribute mark-up.
  8. Some of our embedded third party content (i.e. YouTube or Google Maps) have frame elements that are not accessible - WCAG 4.1.2 Failure of Success Criterion to ensure that Assistive Technologies (AT) can gather information about, activate (or set) and keep up to date on the status of user interface controls in the content.

We aim to correct the above issues by 31st March 2025.

Images

Some images on this website contain text - WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.5. or WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content).

Some of the images on our site are complex diagrams where suitable alt text is not possible. A list of these images is available here (www.lhch.nhs.uk/inaccessible-images) . By 31st March 2025 we intend to have reviewed all of these images, and where possible will have converted them to accessible format, used a different visualisation method or added detailed description text to the page.

Video

Video content uses automated closed captioning and transcription, and this is often inaccurate. By 31st March 2025 we will aim to review these captions and ensure their accuracy manually.

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

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs containing important patient information or about our services.

By 31st March 2025, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible documents or HTML pages. We have removed a number of documents to date.

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.

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

An exception to this our annual reports, which must, by law, be laid before parliament in a printed version, and then appear unaltered.

Live video

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

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We regularly review what we are doing in terms of providing better accessibility to our website. We are working through making all PDF documents accessible as a priority.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 1st September 2023.

It was last reviewed on 23 October 2024.

This website was last tested on 14/10/24 by Cube Creative using Axe Accessibility Tools.