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Accessibility

This page provides more information on accessibility. Here, you’ll find our accessibility statement, some supporting information on accessibility and more.

Accessible Information Standard

The Accessible Information Standard aims to make sure that our families/carers who have a disability, impairment or sensory loss get information that they can access and understand, and any communication support that they need from Alder Hey..


As part of the Accessible Information Standard, Alder Hey must do five things. We must:

  1. Ask our families/carers if they have any information or communication needs and find out how to meet their needs.
  2. Record those needs clearly and in a set way.
  3. Highlight or flag the person’s file or notes so it is clear that we have information or communication needs and how to meet those needs.
  4. Share information about people’s information and communication needs with other providers of NHS and adult social care, when we have consent or permission to do so.
  5. Take steps to ensure that our families/carers receive information which they can
    access and understand and receive communication support if they need it.

What does the Standard include?

The Standard says that our families/carers with a disability, impairment or sensory loss should:

  • Be able to contact, and be contacted by, Alder Hey services in accessible way, for example via email or text message.
  • Receive information and correspondence in formats they can read and understand, for example in audio, braille, easy read, or large print.
  • Be supported by a communication professional at appointments if this is needed to support conversation, for example, a British Sign Language interpreter.
  • Get support from health and care staff and organisations to communicate, for example to lip-read or use a hearing aid.

Accessible Information Standard Useful Links

For more information/guidance around the standard, you can visit the NHS England website.

A short update about the approval is also available in the following formats .:
Accessible Information Standard update July 2015 –  Easy Read 
Accessible Information Standard update July 2015  – Word document 
Accessible Information Standard update July 2015  – PDF 
Accessible Information Standard update July 2015  – BSL Video and Subtitles 
Accessible Information Standard update July 2015 –  Audio (Insert copy)

This information is available in large print, other formats, and
languages on request. Email: [email protected]

Further information on the accessible information standard can be found on the NHS England website.

Accessibility statement for Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust

This accessibility statement applies to www.alderhey.nhs.uk

This website is run by Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • 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
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.
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 are not fully accessible:

  • the text will not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window
  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • live video streams do not have captions
  • some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
  • there’s a limit to how far you can magnify the map on our ‘contact us’ page

Feedback and contact information

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

If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page, call or email us [email protected] for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact our patient experience team at [email protected]

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).

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 offices have 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 [email protected]

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Alder Hey Children’s 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

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to examples of pdfs on our website such as our Annual Report and other legally required publications listed on our Publications page and on other pages on our website.

We plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2024. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden

Navigation and accessing information

There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option).

It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content.

It’s not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping.

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.

Our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website.

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information, and with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal, likely to be in 2028 (5 years).

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

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word 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 our annual report which is in a pdf, and other legally required documents, but you can request an alternative format and we will look to provide this, if possible.

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 have plans to make improvements to the accessibility of the website. We aim to have all our Patient Information Leaflets as a web page by the end of March 2024.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 14th June 2023. It was last reviewed on 1st July 2023.

This website was last tested on 22nd June 2023. The test was carried out by Mixd.

We selected a sample of pages to test based on average use, volume of traffic, and content type. We tested the following pages as they contain our main features used across the site:

If you would like to access the full accessibility test report, please contact us.

Page last reviewed: