We know some PDF, Excel and Word documents are not fully accessible and that it is likely that documents that are uploaded in the future and are in this format are likely not be fully accessible. This is something we’re working on, which you can read about in our accessibility roadmap.
If you need information from this website in a different format please email [email protected]
We have assessed that ensuring every document published on our website meets the accessibility legislation would be a disproportionate burden.
Scope
Our assessment looks at PDF, Excel and Word documents that are not essential to the provision of our services and patient care. This includes, but may not be limited to, our annual report and accounts, public board papers, as well as some policies, procedures, strategies, plans and reports. These files do not consistently meet accessibility standards such as:
- Non-text content
- Info and relationships
- Meaningful sequence
- Contrast (Minimum)
- Page titled
- Focus order
- Headings and labels
We continue to make incremental improvements to the accessibility of any new versions of these documents which is set out in our accessibility roadmap. This includes delivering training to teams across our Trust, creating accessible templates, and running automated accessibility checks.
However, we cannot guarantee full accessibility at this time. This is in part due to the format of financial data and performance reports as well as the complexities of some of the information.
As a learning disability trust, sharing accessible information is important to us. We are committed to making all documents relating to patient care and the provision of our services accessible, as HTML web pages and, where necessary, as accessible documents. There is already a process in place for this.
We will always make information and documents that are essential to providing patient care accessible.
Most of the information on our website is fully accessible already.
Benefits
The benefits of making these documents into accessible HTML web pages are:
- Information would be accessible to everyone.
- Information would be easier to search and index.
Burden
Our assessment of the burden of making these documents into accessible HTML web pages is that:
- There are over 1000 PDF, Word, Excel and Powerpoint files published on our website.
- Each document would need to be reviewed for accessibility. Many are likely to require several hours’ work to become accessible. We estimate between two and thirty hours per document, depending on the length, complexity, and any sign off required. Based on a conservative estimation – 1000 documents taking 2 hours to fix would take a member of staff over a year to check and fix all documents.
- Some documents, such as our board papers, are compiled by multiple people shortly before they are legally required to be available to the public.
- Many of the documents are part of our legislative duty as an NHS foundation trust, e.g. annual reports, and publishing a new version may require detailed checking, a formal sign-off process, and submitting a new official version.
- Many of the documents contain complex elements which are difficult to retrospectively convert, such as detailed tables, graphs, and diagrams.
Other factors
- Our focus is to ensure that any new documents, relating to patient care and essential to the delivery of our services, are accessible and meet the needs of patients, carers, and people living in our communities.
- Interest in the documents within the scope of this assessment is low.
- We have and will always provide people with accessible versions of these documents on request.
- During 2022 we had zero requests for accessible versions of any documents published on our website.
Assessment
We believe converting documents, where there is little evidence of demand, would represent a disproportionate burden on our Trust because of the staff time it would take and the associated costs.
Last updated 17 August 2023
