Accessibility

This accessibility statement is for the NHS Digital National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) website (digital.nhs.uk/ndrs ) only. It does not cover any websites linked from this one. Those sites will have their own accessibility statements.

On this website, you should be able to:

• zoom in up to 300% with text staying visible on the screen, and most images scaling without resolution loss, using standard browser features
• navigate most of the website using a keyboard
• navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
• read most of the website using a screen reader, including the latest versions of JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver
• read most of the website on devices without a screen, like a braille computer
• use the website even if Javascript is switched off

As much as possible we have aimed to keep the website text easy to understand and tried to avoid jargon where possible.

Some of our content is technical, and we use technical terms where there is no easier wording we could use without changing what the text means.

If you have a disability then AbilityNet has advice to help you make your device easier to use

In creating this site we have aimed for the AAA accessibility standard.

We hope that the majority, if not all, of this website is fully accessible, and we run regular audits to identify any new problems. If you identify anything you feel is not accessible please make us aware via the contact page.

We know that some parts of the website aren't fully accessible, particularly that we have a number of old publication documents which are in PDF format, and haven't been designed for accessibility.

If you have problems accessing information on this website, or would like any of our work in a different format like a more accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording, or braille please contact us here and we will aim to respond within 5 working days.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you’re not happy with how we respond to your enquiry, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

The National Disease Registration Service is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

The vast majority of our website works correctly on any web technology.

For security reasons, we only support TLS 1.2 and higher security protocols, and this means that some older browsers will not show the site.

How our site looks and work is based on HTML5, and we test for and support the following browsers:

• Google Chrome (versions in support)
• Mozilla Firefox (versions in support)
• Microsoft Edge (versions in support)
• Apple Safari (versions in support)

We also test in the Lynx browser to ensure that the site renders correctly for non-screen users.

You may experience unexpected behaviour in other browsers, although we use fully validated code which should work on any modern (HTML5) browser.

NHS Digital who host this site no longer support Internet Explorer, as this browser is now at the end of its lifecycle.

Read more information about the withdrawal of IE support

We are aware of the following issues within the links on our site:

• many older PDF files contain broken links which do not resolve - we do not intend to resolve these as it is a disproportionate burden for files which are no longer in active use

We scan the site monthly for broken links, and look to fix them as soon as they are identified. If you find any please do make us aware via the contact us form.

PDFs are not able to comply with the requirements of the web accessibility standard, and we do not generally upload new PDFs. Where we do create new PDFs, we use the PDF/A standard which is more accessible.

Our site contains a large number of PDFs created in previous years, especially in our data and information publications.

Where these are no longer being updated, we do not intend to recreate them in accessible versions as this would be a disproportionate burden.The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

By September 2023 we intend to have completed the process of converting PDFs and word documents still in active use into accessible web formats. We also have a number of forms in Microsoft Word format, which are not accessible. We will either replace these with accessible HTML forms, or remove them September 2023.

We strive to make all of our content accessible. We are aware of the following issues with images and video on our site:

• Video content uses automated closed captioning and transcripting, and this can be inaccurate. 
• Some of the images on our site are complex diagrams where suitable alt text is not possible. In these cases we have ensured there is a detailed description on the page

At the current time we are not aware of any issues with text and content. Please let us know if you see anything that needs addressing. 

We are aware that we have PowerBI and Tableau visualisations available on the website. Neither of these software items are accessible, and cannot be made accessible. In some cases the information is not easily available to users in an accessible format. We are currently investigating accessible visualisation tools. If you require information from these tools, then please get in touch via the contact us page