Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to southwestlondonics.org.uk

We are committed to making our website accessible for all, and aim to achieve the standards described in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

As a user with accessible needs, you should be able to:

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts using browser functionality
• zoom in up to 400 per cent 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, search AbilityNet for advice on making your device easier to use.

How accessible this website is

We know from recent accessibility audits that parts of this site are not fully accessible.

PDFs

Many of our PDFs are not fully accessible to screen reader software. Some of these PDFs are essential to making our organisation transparent. For example:

• some Integrated Care Partnership Board papers are only available in PDFs which are not fully accessible
• our Richmond borough health and care plan is only available in a PDF which is not fully accessible
• our Integrated Care Partnership strategy is only available in a PDF which is not fully accessible

If you’re having problems using any PDFs on this website, please contact us for advice.

Other parts of the website that are not fully accessible

• Most of our videos don’t include text to describe important visual details, such as the caption for the speaker’s name and title.
• Some elements, such as long email addresses, don’t reflow to fit into a single column on the webpage
• Colour is the only way to distinguish links on some webpages

Enforcement procedure

If you contact us with a complaint and you’re not happy with our response, you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 on legislation.gov.uk (the “accessibility regulations”).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

We are committed to making this website accessible, in accordance with accessibility regulations.

Compliance status

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

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with accessibility regulations

Content visibility

• In mobile view, some content does not reflow to fit in a single column on the webpage, which may affect the visibility of some elements (Reflow 1.4.10)
• Only colour is used to distinguish links on some webpages, which makes it difficult for some users to identify the links (Use of colour 1.4.1)

Videos

• Audio descriptions have not been provided for video content, which makes visual details hard to understand for some users (Audio description or media alternative (pre-recorded) 1.2.3; Audio description (pre-recorded) 1.2.5)

PDFs

• The correct reading order isn’t always specified, which makes navigating the content with a screen reader more difficult (Info and relationships 1.3.1)
• The primary text language isn’t always specified, which makes it hard for screen readers to switch to the correct language (Language of page 3.1.1)
• The document title is often missing, which makes navigating the document more difficult (Page titled 2.4)
• Bookmarks that parallel the document structure are sometimes missing which makes it harder for some users to find the content they are interested in (Bypass blocks 2.4.1)
• Colour contrast is not always adequate, which makes it harder to read for some people with visual impairment (Contrast (minimum) 1.4.3)
• Content is not always tagged, which makes it harder for some users to navigate the document (Info and relationships 1.3.1)
• Sometimes there is no tab order, which makes it harder for some users top navigate the document (Focus order 2.4.3)
• Images sometimes don’t have alternative text, which means some users won’t be able to understand information in the image (Non text content 1.1.1)
• Tables often don’t work with assistive technologies which makes it harder for some people to understand the data (Info and relationships 1.3.1)

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

PDFs and other documents

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.

Wherever possible, we avoid publishing PDFs and create content as structured HTML web pages instead.

Live video

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

We are committed to making our website accessible for all and will make sure that accessibility issues highlighted in this statement are prioritised and fixed.

The measures we are taking to improve the accessibility of this site include:

• publishing tools and guidance on our staff intranet to help everyone develop content that’s accessible
• reducing the amount of new content we produce as PDFs
• reviewing how we produce committee and board papers to make them more accessible
• carrying out regular audits of this website to find and fix problems with accessibility
• replacing non-compliant PDFs with accessible versions as they come up for review
• working with our suppliers to improve the accessibility of the materials they develop for us

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was first prepared on 30 June 2022. It was last reviewed on 20 November 2023.

This website was last audited on 17 November 2023. The site was audited by a specialist in accessible web design at MixD.

A representative page sample approach was taken. Critical path testing was performed on 10 pages and 2 PDF files.