Accessibility on this website

What you should be able to do

This site has been built so that you can:

• Make the text up to twice as large and still read every page. On the very smallest screens at that size a little of some pages sits outside the screen — that is described below.
• Zoom in to 200% on a phone or a desktop.
• Move through every page, menu, form and panel using only a keyboard, with a clearly visible outline showing where you are.
• Use the site with a screen reader — headings are in order, images that carry meaning are described, and the parts of each page are marked up as the landmarks a screen reader can jump between.
• Turn animation off. If your device is set to reduce motion, the site does not animate.
• Read the whole site with images blocked, and with JavaScript switched off.

The fonts, colours and spacing were chosen with reading in mind rather than fashion, and the text and background colours across the site were measured against the standard rather than eyeballed.

How accessible this website is

We are working to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 at level AA — the standard normally used to judge whether a website is accessible.

This website is partially compliant with WCAG 2.2 level AA. The parts that do not yet meet it are listed below. We have chosen to describe them plainly rather than claim more than we can show.

What we have checked

The site has been checked by the team that built it, rather than by an independent auditor. Testing so far has covered:

• Colour contrast measured against the colours actually rendered, including text set over photographs and video, measured frame by frame rather than against a single still.
• A minimum touch and click target of 44 by 44 pixels for every control the site owns.
• Keyboard operation throughout, including the mobile menu, which traps focus while it is open and returns focus to the button that opened it.
• Heading order and page landmarks on every page.
• Text-only zoom at 100%, 150% and 200%, at screen widths from 320 to 2560 pixels.
• Reduced-motion settings, which switch site animation off rather than merely shortening it.

We have not yet commissioned an independent accessibility audit, and we have not yet tested the site with a panel of disabled users. Both would tell us things our own testing cannot, and both are things we would like to do.

Parts that are not accessible yet

These are the problems we know about. Listing them is not an excuse for them — it is so that you know we know, and so that you are not left wondering whether the difficulty you hit was you or us.

The moving row of logos on the home page, on a phone

Below tablet width, the row of independent ratings logos scrolls sideways on its own and cannot be stopped by touch. This does not meet WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.2.2 (Pause, Stop, Hide). It stops if your device is set to reduce motion, and on a larger screen it does not move at all. Nothing is only available inside it — every logo is a link that also appears elsewhere, and the CQC rating it points at has its own page.

The very smallest screen size with the largest text

On a screen 320 pixels wide with text enlarged to 200%, some pages sit slightly outside the screen and can be scrolled sideways — about 32 pixels on the home page, and around 13 on our policy pages, where the cause is the floating care-guide prompt rather than the page itself. This does not meet success criterion 1.4.10 (Reflow). Everything is readable, and every page we have tested is clean at 150% and at every larger screen size.

The CQC rating badge

The rating badge is supplied and controlled by the Care Quality Commission and we cannot change how it is built. Two controls inside it are smaller than the minimum target size. Everything the badge says is also written out as ordinary text beside it, so nothing is lost if you cannot use it.

We are working on the first two. If either of them is stopping you from doing something, please tell us and we will help you directly while we fix it.

Making this site easier to read

Your browser and your device already have good tools for this, and this site is built to respect them rather than to override them.

• To make everything bigger, hold Ctrl and press + on Windows, or Command and + on a Mac. On a phone or tablet, look for text size in your accessibility settings.
• To make only the text bigger, change the font size in your browser’s settings. The layout is built to cope with that up to at least double size.
• To reduce animation, turn on the reduce motion setting on your device. The site checks for it.
• To use a screen reader, no special version of this site is needed — this one is the accessible one.

AbilityNet has step-by-step guides for making your own device easier to use

Tell us about a problem

If you cannot use part of this site, or you need something from it in another format — large print, plain text, or read to you over the telephone — please get in touch and we will provide it. There is no charge and you do not need to explain why you need it.

It helps if you can tell us the page you were on and what you were trying to do, but tell us however you can. We will acknowledge what you send and let you know what we are doing about it.

If you are not happy with our response

Under the Equality Act 2010 we have a duty to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people are not put at a substantial disadvantage. That duty applies to this website as it applies to our care.

If you are not satisfied with how we have responded, the Equality Advisory and Support Service gives free, independent advice on discrimination and human rights, including what to do next.

Contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service

You can also use our complaints procedure