Accessibility

We are committed to making our websites and digital services as accessible as possible. Our aim is to combine excellent user experiences with high levels of accessibility and inclusivity, so everyone can use our digital services, whatever their abilities or disabilities. 

ADAPT YOUR EXPERIENCE TO YOUR NEEDS

This site has been created to be usable ‘as is’, which 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 have also tried to make website text as simple as possible to understand.

Some people are likely to get the most accessible experience by customising their computer to suit their individual needs, for example, to get the site dictated to them, to change the colour-scheme, or increase the size of the text.

If that sounds like it would be useful to you, we recommend you visit AbilityNet for advice on making your devices easier to use if you have a disability.

In addition, major operating systems produce the following guidance:

• Advice for Microsoft users
• Advice for Apple users
• Advice for Linux users
• Advice for Android users

IMPROVING ACCESSIBILITY ON OUR SITE

Through user-testing of our site we are aware that there are accessibility improvements users may benefit from. These are:

• Improving the consistency of our site navigation, and the visibility of highlighting which element on the page has been selected.
• Improving the consistency of labelling in our navigation, and the information on some of our links to make them easier for screen reader users to understand.

Some of the features of the site use WAI-ARIA (a technical specification by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) on how to increase the accessibility of web pages) to provide an accessible experience. All modern computers, tablets and phones include browsers that support WAI-ARIA. However, older Android 4.1 devices do not. If your phone or tablet uses Android 4.1, and you have any difficulties using the site, we recommend you update the operating system on your device to a more recent one.

FEEDBACK AND CONTACT INFORMATION

If you need information on this website in a different format, please email the NDPH Communications Team. We will consider your request and get back to you within 14 days.

Please let us know if you have difficulties using this site.

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of our site, so if you find anything on the site difficult to use please let us know. To help us understand your difficulty quickly, please provide the information advised in ‘Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites’ in your request.

All constructive feedback regarding the accessibility or usability of our site is welcome and will be carefully considered. 

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 have a complaint and are not happy with how we respond to it, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS). 

TECHNICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THIS WEBSITE’S ACCESSIBILITY

We are committed to making our websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. 

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the issues and exemptions listed below. 

NON-ACCESSIBLE CONTENT 

The content listed below is non-accessible for the reasons described. 

Images:

• Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). 

Navigation and accessing information:

• Not all content is contained within navigable blocks within the page which can result in people with cognitive disabilities being unable to navigate from section to section. This fails the WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1.

We are working to fix these issues.

CONTENT THAT IS NOT WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE ACCESSIBILITY REGULATIONS

THIRD-PARTY CONTENT

Our site includes third party content and functionality. This may direct you to a related service, link to another site or supporting documentation. We are not responsible for the accessibility of third-party content or of other sites we link to.

This includes:

• YouTube videos
• Sound Cloud audio files
• Google maps.

We will provide an accessible alternative to any third-party content that isn’t compliant.

WHAT WE’RE DOING TO IMPROVE ACCESSIBILITY

We want to provide the best possible experience for all our website visitors. To achieve this we will:

• Fix known issues
• Check all new features in the Haiku Content Management System (CMS), which is used to create this website, for accessibility before they are made available
• Check all new content for accessibility
• Train all content editors on accessibility
• Carry out periodic accessibility checks.

PREPARATION OF THIS ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT

This statement was prepared on 11 April 2024. This website will be tested in April 2024. The test will be carried out using a carefully chosen sample of pages and content types. The pages will be checked manually using a combination of the following methods: 

• Checked against WCAG 2.1 guidelines, with a focus on the items in the WCAG 2.1 Primer Checklist  
• Viewed without style sheets 
• Viewed on a small screen 
• Checked using WebAim’s Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool.