Digital accessibility for customers and colleagues

There is no area in which this could be more true than digital accessibility across NHSPS.

There are 8.6 million internet users with access needs across the UK, there are an estimated 1.5 million people with learning disabilities in the UK and 2 million people with significant sight loss.

For any of those people and other disabled people, it can be more difficult for them to access the internet, experience a lack of information and isolation without online access.

To help combat this, we have installed Recite Me on our website which is an accessibility and language tool. The tool has a huge range of features including screen reading functionality, multiple reading aids, customisable styling options, and an on-demand live translation feature that boasts over 100 languages including 65 text-to-speech and styling options to help all customers navigate our site in full.

For colleagues, we use Microsoft products to communicate, create, collaborate, search and do work individually and with colleagues and customers. Microsoft has provided lots of useful features to make it easier for colleagues to use their key collaboration tools – namely Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), SharePoint and Teams - to read content out lout, dictate what they want to say on Word, mafnify content and turn on high contrast modes among many others. We're making a conscious effort to promote these tools more widely with our colleagues so they know they have help available.