Accessibility Statement

Using this website

East Sussex County Council, East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust and Fountain Digital Limited run this website. We aim to make it as easy to use as possible. 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 only a keyboard
• listen to our website using a screen reader.

Go to AbilityNet to find out how to make these changes.

All non-text content has a text alternative.

Language

We use plain English to make the text easy to read.

If you would like to read the website in another language use Google Translate.

How accessible this website is

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

• many documents are in PDF and Word format and are not accessible
• there are some css and html errors
• some form controls are not labelled correctly
• iframes are not labelled correctly
• some links are empty or not described properly

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that are not listed on this page or think we are not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, please contact us.

• Email the web team

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

This statement was prepared on 17 September 2020. It was last updated on 17 September 2020.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

East Sussex County Council and East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust are committed to making this website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

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

Non-accessible content

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

Forms

Some of our form fields and buttons are not labelled correctly. This means some users will not be able to identify the purpose of the form field. This does not comply with WCAG 2.1 A F68.

iframes

Some iframes do not have a title. This means that assistive technologies will read out the frame filename, which may be meaningless. This does not meet with success criterion WCAG 2.1 A 2.4.1.

Links

On some pages the links do not contain any text or an image with alt text. This means that assistive technologies cannot identify the purpose of the links. This does not comply with WCAG 2.1 A F89.

HTML

The lang attribute is not used to identify the language of the page. This means that assistive technologies will not be able to discern the default language to convert text into synthetic speech. This does not meet with success criterion WCAG 2.1 A 3.1.1.

The focus outline styling has been switched off through CSS. This means that users cannot see where they are on the page when they tab through links. This does not comply with WCAG 2.1 AA F78.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

We are currently developing this website to fix these known accessibility issues. The updated website will be live on 1 November 2020. A new accessibility statement will be available on the site

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

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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.

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

How we tested this site

This site was most recently tested in July and September 2020. This website was and is currently being tested for compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines V2.1 level A and level AA, and these tests have been carried out internally.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22nd September 2020