Accessibility roadmap 2023 – 2025
We aim to make this website as accessible as possible. This roadmap was published in September 2023 and outlines our plans until autumn 2025.
How we decided our objectives
When we created this website, making it accessible was a priority. It continues to be a priority as we add and update information.
Most of our website is accessible, however we know that some elements and documents do not meet the accessibility requirements.
The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix documents published before 23 September 2018, if they are not essential to the provision of our services.
We have a disproportionate burden assessment for documents not essential to patient care and the provision of our services published after September 2018.
Documents on our website are created by people from all across our Trust. It is more realistic that we will be able to publish accessible content when accessibility has been considered by document authors from the start of the process. Therefore, a key priority in our accessibility roadmap is educating more staff about accessibility.
We also plan to fix the remaining functionality issues outlined in our accessibility statement by the end of 2025. The timeline for this work takes into account the high costs associated with making all of the changes and helps to spread the cost over two financial periods.
We believe that meeting the objectives in this accessibility roadmap will help us to improve the accessibility of the information we share on our website, and help to significantly decrease the number of non-accessible documents we publish.
Our objectives
- Autumn 2023: Share internal update about the accessibility regulations and upcoming changes to the Trust website – COMPLETE
- Autumn 2023: Work with our web developers to develop a plan, timeline and payment scheme to fix all outstanding functionality issues. Tasks to be carried out in phases, starting with the most popular pages first - COMPLETE
- Winter 2023 – Autumn 2025: Communications team to create a spreadsheet of the website site map, and check each page for issues with image alt-text, non-contextual links and headings outlined in our accessibility statement.
- Spring 2024: Launch an educational internal campaign about accessibility. The campaign will signpost staff to information about accessibility, why it is important and how to create accessible content.
- Spring/Summer 2024: Update our policy process to signpost policy writers and other document authors to our information for staff about how to write accessible content, and ask policy writers to use the check accessibility function in Word and fix all errors.
- Spring/Summer 2024: Develop accessible policy templates to make it easier for all staff to create content that is accessible.
- Autumn/Winter 2024: Ensure internal Policy team adopt accessible templates for all new policies - COMPLETE
- Spring 2025/Summer 2025 - Ensure that all Trust policies are transferred onto the new template at their review dates.
- Winter 2025: Full website accessibility audit to be carried out by our web developers to confirm that all changes have been made, or identify any outstanding issues.
Accessibility audits
We get this website audited regularly; the last audit was in August 2023 by Frank Design Ltd.
Of the pages that were recently audited, there were some issues of non-compliance, which we have fixed. For example:
- We fixed some non-contextual links
- We changed our cookie policy banner as it was not fully keyboard accessible
- We changed how our social media icons worked at 200% zoom as they were not fully keyboard accessible
We have also completed a number of further updates, including:
- Removing over 100 inaccessible documents
- Converting all Patient Information Leaflets to HTML
- Converting Trust Board meeting agendas from the past 12 months to HTML
- Checking every page from the main navigation bar to ensure that each one includes contextual links and image alt-text
- Deleted 8 pages that were not accessible and no longer needed
- Removed or converted inaccessible features on pages, including photo carousels and images of text
- Updated all website forms to remove inaccessible date pickers
- Removed third party easy-read software that was not accessible. We are now looking into alternatives
- Created our Publication Scheme page to support website visitors to find the information they need in an accessible format
- Created our accessibility roadmap to plan in the work needed to ensure we become fully compliant with the regulations.
If you have any feedback on the accessibility of our website, please email communications.team@mbht.nhs.uk