Accessibility

We want to ensure that our website is accessible to the widest possible audience and that it can be used by people of all abilities and needs.


Browsers

Our websites can be viewed on any browser or device but, for the best possible experience we recommend the following browsers:

  • Firefox 3+
  • Safari 2+
  • Google Chrome
  • Opera
  • Internet Explorer 7+


Translations

If you would like to translate this website into another language, the ‘select language’ option accesses Google Translate which translates English into 64 languages.

Please note that Sanctuary Group is not responsible for the content of Google Translate and cannot guarantee the reliability of the translations provided.


Help to download documents

We currently use two types of files on our website. These files, and the software programmes you'll need to open them are detailed below.

Adobe Acrobat and PDF files

Adobe Acrobat is a popular document exchange medium. It works on the principle that documents produced in most software packages can be transformed into a .pdf file (the Adobe Acrobat format) and then read by the free reader package available from Adobe called Adobe Acrobat Reader. A key advantage is that it preserves all the formatting of the original file, including images, font and layout.

To read the documents you must first download the reader software from the Adobe Website.

Adobe Acrobat reader as a helper application

You can add Acrobat Reader as a helper application to your browser so that it will launch automatically when you try to access a pdf file online.

DOC, XLS, PPT files and Microsoft (MS) Office

MS Office software programmes are widely used by business for editing information. They are:

  • MS Word - a text and content editor.
  • MS Excel - a spreadsheet used for figures and graphical representations.
  • MS Powerpoint - a presentation tool which shows picture and text information in a slideshow format.

If you do not have the MS Office programme you need, MS Offfice recommend installing the Office apps or storing documents in OneDrive or Dropbox, where Word Online, Excel Online or PowerPoint Online opens them in your browser. For the mobile apps, visit the store for your device. This is a piece of software that allows you to view, but not edit the file.

If you still have questions or problems not answered here, please get in contact with us, and we'll do our best to help.


Easy read content

We have produced a range of content in an easy read format.

Access easy read content >>


Screen size and colour

Our websites can be viewed on a range of different screen sizes and the size of text can be changed to suit each user. To help people find information more easily, our websites have a search facility and site map, as well as a number of colour and graphic-based navigational cues.

Controlling text and colours in your web browser

You can also specify the font sizes, styles and colours and foreground and background colours of web pages displayed on your computer screen. This is useful for those:

  1. With impaired vision
  2. Needing a larger font size
  3. Needing high-contrast colours

You can configure most common internet browsers  to use the colours and fonts you specify, your default Windows colours and fonts, or the settings you specify in your own style sheet.

Further information on how to customise your internet browser can be found on the following links:

  1. Internet Explorer: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-vista/Internet-Explorer-accessibility-options
  2. Chrome: http://support.google.com/chromeos/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=177893
  3. Firefox: http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/accessibility-features-firefox-make-firefox-and-we
  4. Safari: http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html


Accessibility guidelines

All pages of this website conform to Success Criteria Level 2 (AA) of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. These guidelines are the internationally recognised benchmark for building Accessible websites.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines explain how to make web products more Accessible for people with disabilities and other access challenges. Conformity to these guidelines also makes web products more user-friendly for all people.

This web product has also been constructed according to the recommendations contained in BS (British Standard) 8878 throughout its development life cycle.

Web Standards and Technologies

This website has been built to conform to W3C standards for HTML and CSS. These technologies are relied upon throughout the site. The site displays correctly in all Standards-based web browsers and degrades gracefully in older browsers. The web product is fully functional when the CSS is disabled.


Conformance date

This Accessibility statement was issued in October 2020.


Guidelines exception

The following information covers any exceptions to the above Guidelines that we are currently aware of.

NHS standard colours - Light blue colour used on our website

The colours used on our website are the NHS standard colours and while we realise that the white text on a lighter blue background and the light blue text on a white background can affect some users and does not meet the WCAG 2.1 Guidelines at Double-A, we have found that this has not unduly affected our users and to date we have not had any complaints in this regard.

Additionally, our website is coded in such a way that if the user removes the style sheet via their browser they will see the website in the default colours of the web.

Should we become aware of users experiencing difficulty with any aspect of our website we will do our best to solve the issue if it is within our control.