Accessibility
NHS Education for Scotland (NES) is committed to easy access for everyone. We're constantly working towards improving the accessibility of this website to ensure we provide equal access to all of our users.
The Matrix website was launched in November 2023.
This website is run by NHS Education for Scotland. We plan to make this website fully accessible in line with new legislation by the end of the 2023 to 2024 financial year. As of 1st November 2023, it is partially compliant.
We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
- 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
- skip to content links at the top of the page
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
How accessible this website is
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.
However we know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible:
- form elements do not have labels
- some elements have no focus states
- there is no skip to main content functionality
What to do if you can't access parts of this website
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:
Email: support.web@nes.scot.nhs.uk and ask for Colin Sanders.
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 days.
Reporting accessibility problems with this website
We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: support.web@nes.scot.nhs.uk
When you get in touch with us, we will:
- acknowledge your contact
- tell you who is dealing with it
- confirm when you can expect a reply
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).
Technical information about this website's accessibility
NHS Education for Scotland is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Websites) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
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.
Missing focus elements
There are some missing styles for focus elements such as action buttons which make it visually difficult to see what your keyboard is focused on when tabbing through the application. This fails WCAG Success Criterion 2.4.7: Focus Visible.
Missing labels on form elements
Some of our form elements are missing labels which will make it difficult for those using screen readers to describe what the element is. This fails WCAG Success Criterion 2.4.6 Headings and Labels.
No skip to main content
There is currently no way to skip to the main content via the keyboard. This fails WCAG Success Criterion 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks.
How accessible our documents are
New documents we publish and documents you need to download or fill in to access one of the services we provide should be fully accessible.
However, we know that some of our older documents, published before 23 September 2018, are not accessible. For example, some of them are not tagged up properly and do not contain proper headings.
This mostly applies to our older PDF and Word documents examples of them are located within our recruitment sections. These types of documents are exempt from the regulations, so we do not currently have any plans to make them accessible.
How accessible our videos are
From September 23rd 2020 all video content should have captions. However there may be circumstances where this is not possible such as:
- the video is too long to caption and would not be cost effective to do so
- there are not enough resources to caption video at the time
Captioning software can have issues with the local dialect which can produce inaccurate captions. This could cause problems when the correct spelling of a medical term is essential.
As a result, manual correction of captions is required for our videos and this is one of the factors we assess when we consider our approach to developing captions and transcripts for videos.
This would be a fail on WCAG Success Criterion 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded).
Some of our older videos and live streams do not have captions. This type of video content is exempt from the regulations and we do not currently have any plans to make them accessible.
Getting in touch
If there is video content that you are not able to access and wish to do so please get in touch at support.web@nes.scot.nhs.uk and we will consider your request and get back to you within 5 days.
If you are currently using captions to access our video content, we would love to hear from you with any feedback as this will allow us to improve our service.
How we tested this website
This website was tested on 10th October 2022. The test was carried out by a member of staff from NES Digital using the using the Lighthouse Accessibility extension for Chrome, keyboard navigation and JAWS screen reader using Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.
We decided that the following pages were examples of the different type of content across the website.
We tested:
- homepage
- contact page
- pages with content
What we are doing to improve accessibility
We intend to have this website fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard by by the end of the 2023/2024 financial year.
This statement was prepared on 25th October 2023. It was last updated on 25th October 2023.