NHS Education for Scotland (NES) is committed to easy access for everyone. We're continually working towards improving the accessibility of this website, to make sure we provide equal access to all our users.
The NHS Scotland Academy website was launched in October 2021. We plan to make the application fully accessible in line with new legislation by the end of the 2020-2021 financial year.
At the moment(as of 19/10/2021) it is partially compliant.
This website is improved on a regular basis in an Agile way and we want to be clear and transparent with regards to what we are doing to improve accessibility for the users of this software.
This website is run by NHS Education for Scotland . We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
- zoom in 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
- skip to content links at the top of the page
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 aren’t fully accessible:
- No Alt tags on images
- There are missing labels on some form elements
- The colour palette on links are not accessible
- Our videos don't have captions or transcripts
- Some of our older PDF documents are not fully accessible
What to do if you can’t access parts of this website
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:
Email: support.web@nes.scot.nhs.uk
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 days.
Enforcement procedure
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Websites) (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
Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter. If you are deaf and would like to communicate with us without visiting the office please contact us using the email address below and we can use contactSCOTLAND-BSL interpretation service to discuss your issues.
Email:colin.sanders@nhs.scot
Address: 2 Central Quay, 89 Hydepark Street, Glasgow, G3 8BW
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
NHS Education for Scotland is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Websites) (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 compliance's below.
Non accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
No Alt tags on images
Some of the images on this website are missing Alt text. This makes it difficult for screen readers to describe what the image is to users. This fails WCAG 2.1 guideline 1.1.1 (non-text content).
Missing labels on form elements
Some of our form elements are missing labels which will make it difficult for those using screen readers to describe what the element is. This fails WCAG Success Criterion 2.4.6 Headings and Labels .
Contrast issues with page elements
There are colour contrast issues on elements such as hyperlinks. This fails WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.11: Non-text Contrast and WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum ).
How accessible our documents are
New documents we publish and documents you need to download or fill in to access one of the services we provide should be fully accessible.
However, we know that some of our older documents (published before 23 September 2018) are not accessible. For example, some of them:
- are just photocopies and are not marked up in a way that allows screen reader users to understand them
- are not tagged up properly - for example, they do not contain proper headings
This mostly applies to our older PDF and Word documents . These types of documents are exempt from the regulations, so we do not currently have any plans to make them accessible.
How accessible our videos are
From September 23rd 2020 all video content should have captions. However there may be circumstances where this is not possible such as:
- The video is too long to caption and would not be cost effective to do so
- There are not enough resources to caption video at the time
- Captioning software can have issues with the local dialect which can produce inaccurate captions. This could cause problems when the correct spelling of a medical term is essential.
As a result, manual correction of captions is required for our videos and this is one of the factors we assess when we consider our approach to developing captions and transcripts for videos.
This would be a fail on WCAG Success Criterion 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded).
Some of our older videos and live streams do not have captions. This type of video content is exempt from the regulations and we do not currently have any plans to make them accessible.
Getting in touch
If there is video content that you are not able to access and wish to do so please get in touch at support.web@nes.scot.nhs.uk and we will consider your request and get back to you within 5 days.
If you are currently using captions to access our video content, we would love to hear from you with any feedback as this will allow us to improve our service.
How we tested this website
This website was last tested on the 19th October 2021. The test was carried out by a member of staff from NES Digital using a combination of Lighthouse Accessibility Auditing Tools (integrated Chrome and Internet Explorer development tool), JAWS screen reader and Keyboard navigation.
Pages that were tested:
- homepage
- pages with content
- contact page
What we are doing to improve accessibility
We plan to have this website fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard by the end of the 2021/2022 financial year.
This statement was last updated on 19th October 2021.