This accessibility statement applies to www.rbht.nhs.uk – the website for the Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals. The website is run by The Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust Heart, Lung and Critical Care Clinical Group.
We are committed to making sure as many people as possible are able to use this website. As a healthcare organisation, we understand how important it is for our patients and the people who care for them to easily access, perceive and understand the information they need.
We want as many people as possible to be able to use and understand this website. That means you should be able to:
- change colours, contrast levels and fonts using your browser
- zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
- navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
- navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
- listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)
- understand all our information, including medical information, which is written in plain English.
We follow best practice and evidence-based guidance to make the wording on our website as simple to understand as possible. This includes the NHS content style guide and the Gov.UK content design guide.
AbilityNet offers simple guides on how to adapt your phone, computer or tablet to meet your needs and make using your device easier if you have a disability, or have difficulty finding information on the internet.
How accessible this website is
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, meaning that our content is accessible for people with additional needs, including neurodivergent and disabled people.
We have tested our site extensively with users on different browsers and devices and using automated tools. Our site is also audited and tested by an independent accessibility testing partner to ensure we meet required standards.
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
- some older PDF documents may not be fully accessible to screen reader software or keyboard navigation tools
- some of our older videos published on the website do not feature video captions
- some of our videos are embedded from YouTube or Vimeo and may have captions that are incorrect or not suitably descriptive
- some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard.
What to do if you can’t access parts of this website
We have designed our content to be as accessible as possible.
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or Braille, please contact us.
We will consider your request and someone reply to you within 5 working days.
Email us at gstt.digitalteam@nhs.net
Reporting accessibility problems with this website
You can help us to improve our website by letting us know if you have any problems accessing any of our content, or if you find anything that you think could be done better.
Email us at gstt.digitalteam@nhs.net
You can also contact us if you have any positive feedback about this website’s accessibility or any tools that you think work particularly well.
Enforcement procedure
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
If you contact us with a complaint and are not happy with our response, you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS)
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
We are committed to making this website accessible in accordance with accessibility regulations and guidance. This includes the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Compliance status
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons:
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
Text links
Some link text does not describe its topic or purpose (for example, ‘download’). This fails the WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria 2.4.4. We plan to fix this issue by October 2025.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
Issues with PDFS and other documents
Some older PDFs, Word and Excel documents do not meet accessibility standards. For example, they may not be accessible to screen reader software or have alternative HTML versions.
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. PDFs or Word documents published after this will meet accessibility standards.
Wherever possible, we avoid publishing PDFs and create content as structured HTML web pages instead.
Live video
We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.
Disproportionate burden
Issues with pre-recorded video
Some of our pre-recorded videos on the website that do not have equivalent text information, are not provided with captions or audio description. Some of our videos are also embedded from YouTube or Vimeo and may have captions that are incorrect or not suitably descriptive.
We have assessed the cost of fixing this issue and believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. When creating new videos we make sure that text information, captions and audio description standards are met.
What we're doing to improve accessibility
We are committed to making our website accessible for all and will make sure that accessibility issues highlighted in this statement are prioritised and fixed.
We use online tools to perform a readability test and carry out basic accessibility checks when uploading new content to the website. We regularly commission an independent accessibility audit on a sample of pages to highlight areas requiring improvement. Our aim is to conduct accessibility audits every year.
- The measures we are taking to improve the accessibility of this site include:
- publishing tools and guidance on our staff intranet to help everyone develop content that’s accessible
- reducing the amount of new content we produce as PDFs
- carrying out regular audits of this website to find and fix problems with accessibility
- replacing non-compliant PDFs with accessible versions as they come up for review
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was first prepared on 17 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 24 September 2025.
This website was last tested in 2024 by Affinity Digital.
We carried out testing on a sample of pages and PDFs, based on:
- our most popular pages
- pages that are created using our common templates
- pages including images, multimedia and downloadable content
- pages including web forms.
Contact us
Email: gstt.digitalteam@nhs.net
Phone: 020 7188 5577
Last updated: 24 September 2025