Accessibility Statement

This website is run by Thornhills Medical Practice. 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 300% with text staying visible on the screen, and most images scaling without resolution loss
• navigate most of the website using a keyboard
• 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 even if Javascript is switched off

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

Some of our content is technical, and we use technical terms where there is no easier wording we could use without changing what the text means.

If you have a disability then AbilityNet has advice to help you make your device easier to use.

How accessible this website is

All of the pages within the website aim to conform to the Accessibility standards which are set out by the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other accessibility guidance. This website is tested against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities, and user friendly for everyone. We designed all pages of this website to be fully accessible with the standards and encompass all disabilities that affect access to the website.

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

• some widgets, outside editing control, may fail permitted contrast ratios
• some of our downloadable documents may not be fully accessible to screen readers software.
• some content is embedded in our website, such as maps and videos, and you cannot easily scale these on screen

Reporting accessibility problems

We're 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 contact our practice manager by using our secure online contact us form.

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).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

We provide a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.

Our surgery has audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

Thornhills Medical Practice 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

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 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 the accessibility regulations 

Disproportionate Burden

Images

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) We plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2021 When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Link Description

Not all external link descriptions specify the link destination. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose in Context).

Contrast Ratios not meeting requirements

Contrast Ratios, throughout the website, should meet WCAG 2.1 AA Success Criterion 1.4.3: Contrast (Minimum), however, the practice has custom colour branding which fails to meet this criterion.

Some widgets, outside Practice editing control, may fail permitted contrast ratios. Our supplier will contact any suppliers where this issue is identified.

Audio Captions

YouTube fails to show audio descriptions as default. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.5 (Audio Description).

The information is from third party software and added via an iframe on to our site. There is a setting option to turn on audio description via the video.

PDFs and other documents

This site may contain older PDFs and Word documents that do not meet accessibility standards - 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).

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.

Google Maps

There’s a limit to how far you can magnify the embedded Google Maps on our website. The code for this map is supplied by Google and we are unable to make amendments to it.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

This site is due for an upgrade to the latest platform offered by Tree View Designs which is compliant with WCAG 2.2 (AA).

We continually monitor the accessibility compliance of our site and any updates made we follow strict WCAG 2.1 (AA) guidelines criteria.  

We have now integrated a new Accessibility Widget called UserWay. You can read more about this below

Userway Accessibility Widget

The UserWay Accessibility Widget offers a broad selection of functions that patients can use to meet their individual accessibility needs.

Userway provides the following accessibility functionality:

• Keyboard Navigation
• Screen Reader
• Inrease Text Size
• Stop Animations
• Tooltips
• Convert to Accessible Fonts
• Highlight Links
• Larger Cusor
• Reading Guide
• Dark Mode
• Light Mode
• Invert Colours
• Text Spacing
• Colour Desaturation
• Reveal Page Structure

Compatibility with browsers and assistive technology

This website is designed to be compatible with the following assistive technologies;

• NVDA with Internet Explorer
• NVDA with Google Chrome
• NVDA with Firefox
• NVDA with Edge
• NVDA with Safari
• JAWS with Internet Explorer
• JAWS with Google Chrome
• JAWS with Firefox
• JAWS with Edge
• JAWS with Safari

How our site looks and works is based on HTML5, CSS3 and we test for and support the following browsers:

• Google Chrome (versions in support)
• Mozilla Firefox (versions in support)
• Internet Explorer (version 11 and above)
• Microsoft Edge (versions in support)
• Apple Safari (versions in support)

How we test this website

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

This statement was prepared on 22nd September 2020. It was last reviewed on 6th November 2023 by Tree View Designs Ltd.  We tested the home page and 10 random pages.  Next review due 6th November 2024 by Tree View Designs Ltd.

Accessible features we test manually

• colour contrast, which is done at the design stage by using tools to check we meet the AAA standard of a contrast ratio of 4.5:1
• manual check against the W3C validator
• ensuring that page elements render correctly at all sizes, including when zoomed to 500%
• examining microdata markup and alt text using special tools
• checking content in a text-only browser
• using screen readers to read text aloud
• using disability simulation tools to browse the website

Accessible features we test using third party tools

• PowerMapper
• Arc Toolkit
• axe - Web Accessibility Testing
• WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool
• WebAIM Contrast Checker
• HTML_CodeSniffer
• Pa11y - Automated accessibility testing
• Markup Validation Service