Our Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to www.blackcountryhealthcare.nhs.uk   

This website is run by Black Country Healthcare 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 fonts sizes
  • Translate the page into different language via Google Translate
  • change the contrast
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • access the website with different screen resolutions
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS and NVDA)

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. As of September 2021, this includes the following:

  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • some of our videos do not have captions

 

Feedback and contact information

Please contact us at bchft.communications@nhs.net if you have an accessibility query including (but not limiting to):

  • experiencing issues or bugs while accessing the information on this website
  • if an accessibility problem is not listed within this statement (or anywhere else)
  • if you have any feedback on our accessibility, and if any considerations need to be made

 

Alternative formats

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

Email: bchft.communications@nhs.net

Tel: 0121 612 8032

We’ll consider your request and get back to you as soon as possible.

If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page, call or email us on the above contact details for directions.

 

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

Black Country Healthcare 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 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 by the end of 2023. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

 

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. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By the end of 2023, 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.

 

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

New Website

  • This website is fairly new and was established on 1 April 2020. We have begun building upon and improving website pages and sections with new content and migrating existing content from our previous legacy websites. We anticipate this task to be finalised before December 2021. We will be focusing on making the new website fully accessible with WCAG 2.1 by the end of 2021.

 

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 13 November 2023.