Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to the Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust website.

This website is run by Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust. We want as many people as possible to be able use our website and are committed to making our website accessible. This means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts using browser or device settings
  • zoom in up to 400% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using a keyboard or speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

We’ve also made the text as simple as possible to understand.

While we strive for full compliance with WCAG 2.2 Level AA, we know that some parts of our website are not fully accessible:

  • Our PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. We are actively working to replace them with an accessible format.
  • Some images do not have good alternative text.
  • The NHS Friends and Family Test feedback website we link to (rate my NHS) is not fully accessible:
    • It does not have sufficient colour contrast
    • You cannot zoom to 400 per cent without text in the accessibility bar spilling of the screen
    • There is no alternative text on the site’s logo
    • Screen readers may have trouble identifying the language used on the page, and therefore difficulty reading the text.

Feedback and contact information

If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact rsch.webupdates@nhs.net 

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

Email: rsch.communications@nhs.net 

Telephone: 01483 571 122 ex 6641

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 14 working days.

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).

What we are doing to improve accessibility

  • We are minimising PDFs on our site so that only governance documents, for example board papers, and Patient Information Leaflets, remain as PDF downloads. Other PDF content will be replaced with webpage content. We expect his work to be completed by December 2025.
  • We are working on a way to convert PDF files that do remain on our site to HTML. All new and some historic PDF documents will be presented in HTML format with the option to generate a printable PDF version if required. We plan to start adding an accessible version for all new PDFs from May 2025. Our 600+ Patient Information Leaflets are PDF documents, reviewed at least every three years. For this reason, it could take up to three years for all our PDFs to be available in an accessible format.
  • We are actively reviewing the 'alt text' behind all the images across our sites to make sure we offer more useful descriptions - completion expected December 2025.
  • We are checking the readability of our pages and re-writing information when needed to make it more easily understood - completion expected December 2025.
  • Our third party Family and Friends feedback page providers have advised us that that updating their website to meet web 2.2 AA standard by March 2026.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust 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

The website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard and it is partially compliant. 

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to:

  • PDF documents that have been published since September 2018 that are not compliant to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

Non-accessible content

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

  • PDF documents that have been published since September 2018 that are not compliant to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. For example, they may not be structured so they're accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value). We are working to provide information contained within our PDFs in an accessible format (HTML page) by May 2025. From this time, when we publish new pdfs we will also publish the information on an accessible HTML page. 
  • Images on pages do not always have suitable alternative text and some have incomplete text. This fails WCAG 1.1.1 A success criterion (Non-text Content). We plan to review and update alternative text for all images by December 2025. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.
  • Our interactive map has some elements that are too close together and some non-descriptive links. We are working with our supplier on improving these by June 2025.

Content that is 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. For example, we do not plan to fix historical governance documents, such as board meeting notes and agendas.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 3 April 2025. It was last reviewed on 3 April 2025.

This website was last tested on 3 April against the WCAG 2.2 AA standard.

The test was carried out by VerseOne, the third party company that hosts our website. The site is also automatically reviewed every five days by Silktide and the platform is monitored by our in house communications team.