Making our platforms accessible

Young girl sitting at a table pressing keys on a laptop.

Cambridgeshire Community Services (CCS) NHS Trust is a Public Sector Body and answerable to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). It is responsible for making sure that we comply with the latest law related to public sector websites.

As an NHS organisation, we must make our websites accessible in accordance with the ‘Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.’

We are monitored by the Government Digital Service. The CCS Trust Website was recently audited.

Explore the topics in this page:

Web content accessibility guidance

Basic requirements

How we manage accessibility

What else we do

Welcoming all feedback

Plans for the future

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

There is an internationally accepted standard that we are monitored against called the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). There are 13 comprehensive guidelines and 17 success criteria to satisfy.

We are specifically required to meet the rating 'WCAG 2.1 AA'.

The ‘2.1’ means it was latest version of the guidance published in 2018.
The 'A’ stands for the level of accessibility, AA is an excellent balance between access and an interactive user experience.

We are allowed exemptions in the criteria. This tends be videos and documents, dated before 2018 where updating is a seen as a disproportional burden.

The basic requirements

A website must be able to:

Change colours, contrast levels, and fonts.
Zoom in up to 300% with text staying visible on the screen, and most images scaling without resolution loss.
Navigate most of the website using a keyboard.
Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software.
Read most of the website using a screen reader, including the latest versions of JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver.
Read most of the website on devices without a screen, like a braille computer.

We must also have an accessibility statement on the platform using a government template that explains our compliance.

How we manage accessibility

The digital platforms are built to the WCAG 2.1 AA specification and we use recite me as our accessibility tool bar.

Graphic with recite me interface screenshot

We also have a custom built accessibility checker in the website that will audit a page in less than 4 seconds and identify any issues.

There is also a great deal of training required to design content. There are NHS style guides to follow, we must taken into account different learning styles, create user profiles and create a logical narrative.

Two common content design pitfalls we often seen are:

Videos, graphic or photos being used without alternative descriptions, subtitles or scripts
Using vague or passive instructions such as ‘click here’ or ‘use link below’ rather than inserting the link or named document.

What else we do

Content

Content is designed based on the NHS style guide, the GOV.UK service manual and co-production. The target reading age is 9 years old.

Design Choices

Colours are chosen from an accessible palette, the tone of the colours is also selected to be subtle. Use of design elements is always to enhance but not overload visually. The body font you are reading now is ‘Atkinsons Hyperlegible’. This font was designed with the Braille institute and is widely regarded as one the most accessible and tested fonts.

Phasing out PDFs and leaflet

We are encouraging services to convert all information into webpages to increase accessibility and quality assurance. All pages on the platforms can be downloaded, printed with the desired reading preference using recite me. A lot of time was spent developing the pagination engine to ensure webpages would print and download well. try it now on this webpage.

Backdated web browser capability

The digital platforms are designed to automatically scale back features to make sure they still function as a basic website on older web browsers.

Balancing features with accessibility

To ensure everybody can benefit from interactive features we build in custom accessibility features where possible. Two examples are the listing and script options for the map and video blocks.

Video example

We are Children’s Occupational Therapists and Children’s Therapy Assistants working in the Cambridgeshire community.

You are the expert on your child and the situation, we will offer you our knowledge and skills to help you help your child.

We have a base in Wisbech, in Ely, in Huntingdon and in Cambridge

We see children at home, in school and in a clinic setting and work across both health and social care.

We hope our website will be helpful.

Welcoming all feedback – it’s an opportunity

Improving accessibility is an ongoing process, that we are really keen to constantly improve on. All feedback is welcome, we encourage direct communication to get to solutions and improvements quicker. We have tough skin and will be supportive!

Feedback example

Please tell us about your recent experience with any of our services by answering a few simple questions. We want to hear about what you felt went well and what you think we could do differently.

Your voice makes a difference and helps us improve our services for you and other families.

Complete the survey