Accessibility statement for Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust website

This accessibility statement applies to:

https://www.blackpoolteachinghospitals.nhs.uk
https://lancashiresexualhealth.nhs.uk
https://www.naes.nhs.uk/
https://www.blackpoolclinicalcoding.nhs.uk. 

These websites are managed by Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Our aim is to provide accessible information and ensure equal access to our services, so that everyone can use the website.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • 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
  • some PDF documents may not be fully accessible to screen reader software
  • live video streams do not have captions.

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 five working days.

If you cannot view the map on our contact us page, call or email 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:

Communications team
Blackpool Victoria Hospital
Home 15
Whinney Heys Road
Blackpool
FY3 8NR

Email: bfwh.trustcommunications@nhs.net

Call: 01253 300000

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in five days.

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

You can contact our Patient Relations team for more information.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Blackpool Teaching 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.

Non-accessible content

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

  • Board and Council papers, some statutory information such as transactions, Trust policies and patient information leaflets are provided only in PDF format and do not always meet accessibility standards. The structure of the content is not always available to assistive technology, which makes the content difficult to understand and navigate for users of screen readers (Info and relationships 1.3.1). The language is missing in some of the documents (Language of Page 3.1.1) and some page titles are missing (2.4.2 Page Titled). We know that in the documents, particularly the Board Papers, there are tables which are not correctly marked up and are not picked up properly by assistive technology (1.3.1 Tables) and some imagery is missing alternative text (1.1.1 Non Text Content).

Disproportionate burden

We believe that our approach to carrying out accessibility checks is reasonable but means that we will not always do detailed accessibility checks on our website. This might mean accessibility issues on some of websites are not fixed.

However, the accessibility regulations say that we do not need to make a website accessible if doing so would impose a disproportionate burden on us.

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. 

Board papers and patient information leaflets are being converted where possible and we will continue to prioritise transferring these into webpages and/or find accessible alternatives. We plan to ensure this is done by November 2024.

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.

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 websites.  We are currently reviewing assistive technologies that will sit on our website and allow all users to easily access information, change contrasts, read aloud sections of the site (including PDF documents) without the need of other assistive technologies.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 08 January 2024.

This website has not been fully tested since going live. A basic test was carried out by Beckie Livesey, Head of Digital Communications on https://www.accessibilitychecker.org wen it was launched and a full audit is to follow shortly.

Legal Disclaimer

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is not responsible for the translations provided by Google Translate. Please be aware that the English version of our website is the official text. The translated copies of our site are not legally binding, and any differences created in translation have no legal effect. If there are any concerns regarding the accuracy of the information presented within the translated versions of our site, please refer back to the official English-language website.