As a dedicated public service organisation, we are committed to maximising access to the site amongst users, by upholding the highest accessibility standards.

Our standards

We follow the guidelines laid down by the NHS for website accessibility and our content management system meets all the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act and the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). 

This site aims to always achieve the ‘AA’ rating laid down by W3C WAI.

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How we achieve our standards

We use three basic means of ensuring maximum accessibility:

  • By using style sheets, our software allows users to make adjustments to the appearance of our pages to suit their needs and produces pages compatible with assistive technologies routinely used to access the web.

  • We offer specific options on our website to allow users to change the appearance of content to suit their personal needs, or the speed of their internet connection.

  • The design, structure and editorial content of our site has been created and is maintained with maximum access a priority.


Accessibility functions we provide

Skip navigation

Choosing this link moves the user directly to the main content of the page, bypassing the long list of navigational links which appears on every page. This permits faster and easier navigation for those using screen readers or for anyone using the keyboard rather than a mouse to navigate the site.  This option is available to any user accessing the site using a screen reader.

Text only

This allows users to exclude images and multimedia content, aiding those with slower internet connections or with visual impairment.

Print friendly

Content can be printed without navigational information appearing on page.

Site map

We have worked to produce the simplest and most intuitive navigation structure for our site: the site map offers an alternative to users.


Tell us what you think

We welcome your opinion! We would like to hear about your experiences using the site and any complaints regarding accessibility. Please email the web editor.

If you have a text phone, you can contact the hospital using the Typetalk service by dialling 18001 before the phone number you want to contact.