Accessibility statement

The NHSScotland Careers website was launched in April 2016.

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 2021 to 2022 financial year. As of 23 March 2021, 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
• links do not have accessible names
• there is no skip to main content functionality
• there are duplicate IDs on some pages
• you can't access some navigation items just using the keyboard
• there are colour contrast issues with some elements on the page
• some of our videos may not have captions
• some of our older PDF documents are not fully accessible
• some of our audio podcasts do not have transcripts

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

Telephone: 0141 223 1400 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).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter. If you are deaf and would like to communicate with us without visiting the office please contact us using the email address below and we can use contactSCOTLAND-BSL interpretation service to discuss your issues.

Email: support.web@nes.scot.nhs.uk

Telephone: 0141 223 1400 and ask for Colin Sanders

Address: 2 Central Quay, 89 Hydepark Street, Glasgow, G3 8BW

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.

Duplicate ID on navigation

There is two IDs within the main navigation bar and main content within the homepage which can make it difficult for screen readers to differentiate between elements. This fails WCAG Success Criterion 4.1.1 Parsing.

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.

Issues accessing menu items using keyboard navigation

Users using keyboard navigation will have issues accessing some of our pages on our navigation menu. This fails: 

• WCAG Success Criterion 2.1.2: No Keyboard Trap 
• WCAG Success Criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard
• Contrast issues with page elements

There are colour contrast issues on a few elements within the pages such as background colours and information panels. This fails:

• WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.11: Non-text Contrast
• WCAG Success Criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)

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 accessible are our audio podcasts

We are aiming to have a transcript provided with any of the audio podcasts that are on our website. On the rare occasions that there is no transcript present there will be a blog post detailing information about the content of the podcast.

Getting in touch

If there is audio 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. 

How we tested this website

This website was tested on the 22nd March 2021. 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.

We decided that the following pages were examples of the different type of content across the website.

We tested:

• homepage
• blog pages
• 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 2021/2022 financial year.

This statement was prepared on 23rd March 2021. It was last updated on 23rd March 2021.