Accessibility Statement

Contents

This website is run by the NIHR. We want as many people as possible to be able to use our website, and we have designed it to be accessible.

How you can use this website

On this website, you should be able to:

• change colours, contrast levels, and fonts
• zoom in up to 400% with text staying visible on the screen, and most images scaling without resolution loss
• 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
• use the website, though not the search, even if Javascript is switched off

We've made the website text as simple as possible to understand, using plain English wherever possible. Some of our content is technical, and contains scientific terms and language. In some instances we have not been able to simplify the wording without changing the meaning of the text.

If you have a problem accessing any documents then AbilityNet has advice to help you make your device easier to use.

How accessible this website is

We have made this website as accessible as possible and we run fortnightly audits to identify any new problems.

 Accessible documents:

• All text in documents in the document library

We know that some parts of the website aren't fully accessible:

• we have a number of documents in PDF and other formats not designed for accessibility. We have published a full list of these documents, including the accessibility options available for each one.
• some content is embedded in our website, such as videos, and you cannot easily scale these on screen (but you can open a full screen version)
• some content embedded in our HTML documents is not fully accessible. 

How to get information in an accessible format

If you have problems accessing information on this website, or would like any of our work in a more accessible format please email us details of your request to enquiries@nihr.ac.uk. We will consider your request, and aim to respond within 5 working days

Reporting accessibility problems

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of the website.

If you find any problems which aren't listed on this page, or think that we're not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, then please email enquiries@nihr.ac.uk with the details to let us know and help us improve.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. 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

The NIHR is committed to making 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 non-compliances listed below.

Issues with technology

The vast majority of our website works correctly on any web technology.

For security reasons, we only support TLS 1.2 and higher security protocols, and this means that some older browsers will not show the site.

How our site looks and work is based on HTML5, and we test for and support the following browsers:

• Google Chrome (versions in support)
• Mozilla Firefox (versions in support)
• Microsoft Edge (versions in support)
• Apple Safari (versions in support)

We also test in the Lynx browser to ensure that the site renders correctly for non-screen users.

Internet Explorer is no longer supported by Microsoft, and while the site may work in more recent versions of IE, we do not recommend its use. 

You may experience unexpected behaviour in other browsers, although we use fully validated code which should work on any other browser.

Issues with links

We are aware of the following issues within the links on our site:

• Many older PDF files contain broken links which do not resolve - we do not intend to resolve these as it is a disproportionate burden.
• Some links on the site are not currently formatted in a compliant manner and we aim to fix these as soon as possible.

We scan the site weekly for broken links, and look to fix them as soon as they are identified.  

Issues with PDFs and other documents

Our site favours the HTML format for documents. 

PDFs are not able to comply with the requirements of the web accessibility standard, and we do not generally upload new PDFs. Where we do create new PDFs, we use the PDF/UA standard which is more accessible.

Issues with images and video

We strive to make all of our content accessible. We are aware of the following issues with images and video on our site:

• Video content uses automated closed captioning and transcripting, and this is often inaccurate. We review these captions and ensure their accuracy manually.
• There are some images with accessibility problems and we are working on improving their accessibility.

Issues with menus and buttons

We are aware of the following issues interacting with out site:

• Our main navigation menu and our buttons are not always fully accessible. Our developers are fixing these as a matter of priority. 

How we test this website

We are planning to automate testing against the W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 on a fortnightly basis. We will scan our web pages, and test against all criteria in the guidelines which are possible to automate.

The regular report will be reviewed by the website development team, with any actions taken and prioritised into our future work. We aim to fix all high priority issues within two weeks of them being identified.

In addition, we conduct internal testing against known accessibility issues which are not able to be found through automated testing, on a sampled basis. 

What we are doing to improve

We are actively looking to improve the accessibility on our website.  The improvements below have been identified on our current work schedule.

Non-Accessible Document Log

Some documents on our site are not accessible. These are listed below, along with the reason. We are working hard to ensure that we convert as many of these as we can to online forms or HTML format, providing the remainder in the most accessible format possible.