Accessibility statement

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

This website is run by St George’s University Hospitals 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 the appearance of this site, including font size and colours
  • Use a “plain layout”
  • Translate the page into over 50 languages using Google Translate. Note: Google Translate is a free service to help non-English speakers to understand the basic site information. However, we cannot guarantee that translations are 100% accurate. For this reason, we do not recommend that patients rely on translated text to make medical decisions.
  • Access only using a keyboard, including skipping from link to link using the TAB. The current link will be highlighted in yellow. To move backwards, hold down SHIFT and press the TAB key.

How accessible is this website?

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. This includes:

  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • live video streams do not have captions
  • some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard

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, email: communications@stgeorges.nhs.uk.

We will consider your request and get back to you in 10 days. If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page, email us on communications@stgeorges.nhs.uk 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, please email communications@stgeorges.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 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.

To do this, please contact our Switchboard on 020 8672 1255.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

St George’s University Hospitals 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.

This statement was determined using the analysis provided by Silktide, which stated that this website is 41.6% WCAG 2.1 AA compliant.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

The St George’s website is very large with roughly 1450 pages, and many content writers.

We are reviewing these pages to improve their readability to the WCAG 2.1 Principle 3: Understandable, including using plain English, simple lexicon, short sentences, explaining acronyms in simple digestible paragraphs.

The St George’s website contains around 11,000 images. Historically, many of these have been uploaded and embedded into pages without text alternatives. We plan to solve this by doing a site wide review and fix.

Disproportionate burden

N/A

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

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards. Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential in providing our services.

For example, we have forms published as Word documents. By April 2020, we plan to replace them with accessible HTML forms. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018, if they’re not essential in providing our services.

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 plan to start the build of a brand new fully WCAG 2.1 AA accessible website in March 2021. Therefore, in the meantime, we believe that it is not cost effective to upgrade this current site.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 28 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 28 September 2020.

This website was last tested on 2 July 2020. The test was carried out by The Dextrous Web Ltd, trading as dxw. They used automated tests.

For more information, you can read the accessibility test overview and report.