Disproportionate burden assessment

Introduction

This disproportionate burden assessment is for the content that is published on this website.

We aim to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, but we know that this website is partially compliant with the standard.

We have followed guidance from NHS Digital in preparing this statement and we have followed guidance from gov.uk in preparing our accessibility statement.

Content that does meet accessibility standards

We have designed our website to be accessible. In building the website we focused on the content that we expected to be the most useful to our audiences. The vast majority of this content is published as html, with appropriate heading hierarchies, alt text, link descriptors and subtitled video content.

We want our content to be easily understood and accessible. For example, we publish summary versions of key reports, policies and strategies. We also publish easy read versions that are appropriate for people who have learning disability.

Content that we know is inaccessible

We know that certain content does not fully meet accessibility requirements, for example:

• Our board papers and our archive of board papers.
• Our annual reports and our archive of annual reports.
• We host a large number of downloadable documents on some of our pages.

Much of this content was imported from the Joined Up Care Derbyshire predecessor website and was published prior to the creation of NHS Derby and Derbyshire in July 2022.

We know, from sampling, that some of the content will fail accessibility requirements, because:

• Images may not have alt text embedded
• Heading hierarchies may not be correctly used
• Diagrams and other visual presentations are not described in text

What would need to do to make content accessible

Archive content

We consider that reformatting and republishing archive content (for example old board papers and annual reports) would be a disproportionate burden of work. Dependent on the size of the document, each document would take many hours for a member of staff to republish and there are hundreds of such documents. Neither the team that authored the original report, nor the communications team which manages the website, has the resources to do this work. Additionally, it is highly unlikely that such documents would ever be viewed by more than a handful of people.

Content that remains current

Much content remains current but may not be compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard.

As stated, the website was created through a republishing of previous content on July 2022. The timescales for creation of the new website did not allow for full review of all content, particularly of downloadable documents.
A review of the website was undertaken in summer 2023, partly to identify content publication practices that breach accessibility guidance. The review was also to identify where content may be out of date, or in need of improvement.

An action plan to address the finding of this review will be taken forward in winter 2023. It will focus on the content that is most used, so this can be corrected first. The work will also review downloadable and other content that is not fully accessible, so this can be identified and corrected. This work is likely to take until spring 2024 to complete.

Content that will be published in future

NHS Derby and Derbyshire intends to develop a policy for accessible publications, in both print and online formats. This will be followed by training and guidance for authors of documents that are published to the website.

Content authors will include:

• Managers who prepare reports for boards
• Managers of services who develop policies
• Managers of services who prepare information for informing or engaging with public and stakeholder audiences

In this way we will be able to ensure that all documents meet accessibility standards.

Nonetheless, we work to make our content as accessible as possible.

Making reasonable adjustments

We will consider requests for information to be provided in an accessible format, if that information is currently published in an inaccessible format. We publish a statement to this effect in our accessibility statement.