Accessibility statement for https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/

This accessibility statement applies to https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/, which is run by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. This means that users can:

• zoom 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

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

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

• you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
• most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• some of the text that we have in ‘expandable’ sections are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard

We are working to address these issues.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

• email nw303@medschl.cam.ac.uk or viv.northrop@addenbrookes.nhs.uk
• call 01223 348490

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 14 calendar days.

If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page, call or email nw303@medschl.cam.ac.uk for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: amanda.stranks@addenbrookes.nhs.uk.

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’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Please contact us to discuss your access needs. Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The NIHR Cambridge BRC is committed to making its 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 non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

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).

We added text alternatives for all images by September 2020: it is possible however that a few images are still missing text alternatives. We update these with text alternatives when we come across them. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden

Navigation and accessing information

There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option).

Low-contrast hyperlinks

We use the colour coral to display hyperlinks in our website, in accordance with NIHR branding guidelines. However coral hyperlinks may be difficult to read for people with low vision or colour-blindness. We are working with the central NIHR team on the current branding guidelines including colour for our hyperlinks. We will update any of the branding as soon as possible when new recommendations have been set.

We believe that improving both the navigation and low-contrast hyperlinks now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment if and when we replace the website (likely to be later in 2022).

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 and get involved with the services we provide. We aim to replace all these with either accessible documents or accessible HTML pages: this is work in progress.

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. For example, we do not plan to fix non-essential infographic documents that were uploaded before 23 September 2018. For an example see https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/industry/.

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

Live video

We do not currently host live video streams but may provide these in future. However we do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

In September 2020 we started to address all accessibility issues in our website. To date we have looked at the landing pages for each of our sections and completed a review of all our Patient and Public and About Us pages (which you can get to from https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/public/ and https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/about/ respectively).

We are reviewing the following sections (with estimated completion dates in brackets):

• Our research https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/all-research/ (March 2022)
• Research faculty https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/research-faculty/ (April 2022)
• Industry https://cambridgebrc.nihr.ac.uk/industry/ (March 2022)

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 17 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 10 March 2022.

This website was last tested on 16 September 2020. The test was carried out by NIHR Cambridge BRC.

We decided on a sample of pages to test. This included:

• homepage
• content pages that are mostly text-based
• pages with images, video and audio content
• interactive forms
• PDFs and other document types
• navigation pages
• pages containing information about accessibility, how to contact us and legal information.