Accessibility statement for NHS England

This page was last updated 9 July 2024. It is being reviewed against the latest website accessibility guidelines, and will be updated shortly.

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

This website is run by NHS England. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website.

For example, that means you should be able to:

  • use your web browser 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)
  • access the website using a mobile or tablet.

On sections that don’t provide technical information, 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.

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 – non compliance with regulations (if applicable)

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

  • Some older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • Live video streams do not have captions
  • The events area has some link descriptions missing

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs on medical policy information.

We plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

Tableau visual data

Some of our visual data content uses Tableau (external website). While we aim to make our information as accessible as possible, these dashboards are hosted on an external website which is partially compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA. For example, the following issues may exist:

  • Images do not have alt-text or inaccurate alt-text, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content
  • Pages do not have top-level headings, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 Info and Relationships
  • Some headings don’t include text, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 Info and Relationships
  • Pages have HTML that is not in a meaningful sequence, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence
  • Some text does not have sufficient contrast, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (minimum)
  • Elements in pages are not available to keyboard users, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard
  • Pages do not provide a way to skip to the main content of the page, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks
  • Pages do not have appropriate titles, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.2 Page Titled
  • Links do not have appropriate link text and no alt-text, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context)
  • Some pages have duplicate IDs and accessible technologies like screen readers can fail to read out the correct text, or may read out no text at all, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.1 Parsing
  • Some pages have links that cannot be read by screen readers, failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value

We are reviewing the use of Tableau to understand whether more accessible options are possible for this dashboard data.

Disproportionate burden assessments

Our first priority is to provide all online information in the most accessible format for users. There are a number of document categories that we have assessed for publication and have decided would present a disproportionate burden to produce in HTML. The assessments are published here for the following categories:

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

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. However if there is a specific document that you would like to request in HTML format we will do our best to oblige where possible and practicable.

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

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations, however to ensure accessibility, we record our live videos and caption them, these can be found on our YouTube channel www.youtube.com/user/TheNHSEngland

Events area tools and transactions

The online events booking is built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website.

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information, and with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal, likely to be in the next six months.

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 as soon as possible.

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: england.web@england.nhs.uk with details of the problem you have encountered.

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, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us

There are a number of ways that you can contact us, including a British Sign Language service and a Next Generation Text service for customers who are deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired.

Find out more about how to contact NHS England.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

NHS England is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Recent audits have identified a significant number of PDFs that do not meet accessibility guidelines.

As part of our work to improve the accessibility of this website, we are reviewing our policy on PDFs and other methods of delivering information with a view to making them as accessible as possible.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was initially prepared on December 12 2011. It was last updated on 9 July 2024.

This website was last accessibility tested on September 2021.

We are currently in the discovery phase of work to refresh the NHS England website and improve accessibility. We will update this page with new information about the improvements we make.

As part of our publishing policy, we carry out regular assessments and checks of documents and pages that are uploaded.