The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is committed to making its websites and mobile applications accessible, in accordance with national legislation transposing Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council and in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This accessibility statement applies to the NIHR Sheffield Clinical Research Facility (CRF) website.

Compliance status

The content of this site has been checked manually and using WAVE and is consistent with accessibility requirements for content.

This website is partially compliant with WCAG 2.0/2.1AA, due to the non-compliance/exemptions listed below.

We've made the website text as simple as possible to understand, using plain English wherever possible.

Some of our content is technical, and contains scientific terms and language. In some instances we have not been able to simplify the wording without changing the meaning of the text.

Non-accessible content

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons:

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

• Some content is embedded in our website, such as videos, and you cannot easily scale these on screen (but you can open a full screen version)

• Links that are broken or have non-accessible formatting; We scan the site monthly for broken links, and look to fix them as soon as they are identified.

Disproportionate burden

The breakdown of the existing Google Sites accessibility issues summarises the existing accessibility issues with Google Sites. Fixing for these accessibility issues is the responsibility of Google as providers of the Google Sites product. Therefore, fixes for these issues are beyond NIHR control. The only resolution to fixing these issues ourselves is to change website hosts to another supplier. We’ve assessed the cost of fixing these issues and believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We continue to work with Google in providing feedback and collaborating to ensure Google’s products are as accessible as possible.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

The following non-accessible section(s)/content/function(s) is/are out of scope of the applicable legislation:

• Some of the documents and/or embedded content that we link to for additional information are outside our control and may not be fully accessible.

• The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2021. It was last reviewed on 19 September 2023.

This website was last tested on 19 September 2023. The test was conducted by the NIHR Sheffield Clinical Research Facility (CRF).

We used a third-party accessibility tool called WAVE to test the accessibility of this website. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content.  A full explanation of how this tool works can be found on the WAVE website.

Feedback and contact information

If you wish to report any accessibility challenges in using this website, or if you require any information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please contact sth.crfsheffield@nhs.net.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 30 days. If you do not receive a response, please contact the NIHR Service Desk at 0207 333 5060 (internal or external).

Enforcement procedure

If you do not receive a response to the above request, please contact the NIHR Service Desk (details above) for further escalation.

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).

This website has been built using Google Sites. Please see the NIHR Hub Accessibility Statement which gives more information regarding the general use of Google Sites, including contact details for users who require further Accessibility support.

AccessAble is a website that gives people detailed information if they need to work out if a place is going to be accessible to them. 

Further details about both our Royal Hallamshire and Northern General Hospital sites can be found on the AccessAble website.