Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (MPFT) is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This accessibility statement applies to the MPFT public website. This statement was prepared on Friday 16 August 2024. The next review will be August 2025.

The following audit detailing how our website meets the necessary accessibility standards was produced by Silktide:

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. This means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels, and fonts using browser functionality
  • zoom in up to 400% 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
  • interact with most of the website using a screen reader (including recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We also try to make the website text as simple as possible to understand.

If you have a disability, visit the AbilityNet website for 'how to' guides to make your device easier to use.

We also provide an inbuilt assistive technology, enabling all websites visitors to customise their experience through a range of option to suit their online accessibility and language needs.

The accessibility toolbar on the website provides text size alterations, various contrast settings and a translation tool with over 100 languages.

 

How accessible is this website?

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible and we are committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

In particular many of our documents are in PDF format and are partially accessible.

This website currently partially conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

As shown in the Silktide report, our website is 91% compliant with WCAG 2.1A, and 91% compliant with WCAG 2.1AA.

 

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format, such as accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording, or braille please email communications@mpft.nhs.uk

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 7-10 business days.
 

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, please email communications@mpft.nhs.uk to report this. This will help us improve.
 

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

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

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

 

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliance(s) and the exemptions listed below.

 

Non-accessible content

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

We are aware of the following issues:

  • Non-text content: 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). Work to correct this is ongoing.
  • PDF files: We have 772 PDF files on our website that are partially compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AA Standard. Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services or discharging our legal duties. For example, PDFs with information on how users can access our services, Trust Board papers, and Annual Reports are formatted as PDFs. Wherever possible, we will avoid using PDFs, and instead create content as structured web pages.
  • Not all of our content reaches our target reading age of 12-years old.

This is not a comprehensive list as we are still identifying some accessibility issues.

Disproportionate burden

Trust Board Papers

These PDF documents regularly contain hundreds of pages which contain scanned images, large reports that have been sourced from multiple departments, and spreadsheet data. They are also compiled and uploaded only hours before they are legally required to be available to the public, a delay would risk a fine or a cancelled public meeting. The small numbers of views on these documents doesn't justify the cost of time, effort and resource to fix them.

We are reviewing these PDFs with the aim to make them accessible in the future.

We advise all interested parties to contact Membership@mpft.nhs.uk to talk through any information that might be required in a fully accessible format.

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Our website contains some third-party content that we do not have control over and are not responsible for the accessibility of this content, but we endeavour to work with the third party to improve its accessibility. This may include:

  • some pages have links to PDFs from other third-party websites that include patient information, which we have no control over
  • links to non-MPFT websites
  • content or functionality embedded in, but not a part of our website. This includes:
  • content hosted on other websites, such as social media sites
  • Google Translate feedback form. We are aware that the Google form, when asking the user to rate the translation, does not meet the following accessibility guidelines:
    • Identify the purpose of fields programmatically
    • Ensure form controls have labels
    • Ensure controls change appearance when they are selected
    • Add a submit button to all forms

 

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

A new website is in development and is expected to go live towards the end of 2024. Accessibility of that new website will be a significant improvement on the current site.

 

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on Friday 16 August 2024. The next review will be August 2025.

It is based on the Silktide report and a sample of the website that was tested in May 2023 by Government Digital Service, against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard. You can read the GDS report on their website.

Based on their testing, this site is partially compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA. This means there are some things which are not fully accessible. They used a mixture of simple manual checks and automated tests to find only the most common barriers to users with accessibility needs. They do expect the organisation (MPFT) to fully audit the website to find any other accessibility issues.

  • Manual checks included using each page without a mouse, viewing the page at different zoom settings, and simulating viewing the page on a small screen.
  • The automated tests were completed using the latest version of Axe.
  • Tests were completed using different settings in the Google Chrome browser on macOS with a 13 inch screen.