Accessibility

Our approach to accessibility

This accessibility statement is for the MindMate website (mindmate.org.uk) only. It does not cover any subsites, or any websites linked from this one. Those sites will have their own accessibility statements. 

 This website and the information on it is brought to you by Leeds Health and Care Partnership, on behalf of NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (Leeds office). 

 We work hard to make sure as many people as possible can use the MindMate website – that’s why it is co-produced with young people, parents, carers and professionals, to make sure the content is as good as it can be. We work with other experts as well, such as our external website development team, Thompson, the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (Leeds office) Communications Team, and other partners, too. 

We, along with our website development experts, regularly review and develop the site to make sure it stays up to date technically and stays easy to use. That’s whether our users are using a popular browser or less common one, a screen-reader, a keyboard rather than a mouse to navigate, or things like low-motion mode – all things designed to make the web better for users with different needs. We aim to be accessible for as many users as we can. 

Below we have outlined the ways in which our site can be used by users with varying accessibility needs, as well as any areas that we’re still working on. Please let us know any questions or feedback. 

 Contents:

1. How accessible is this website?
2. Non-accessible content
3. What to do if you can’t access parts of this website and need help?
4. What we’re doing to improve accessibility
5. Getting in touch with us about accessibility

1. How accessible is this website?

Our aim is to comply with the Government’s recommendation for accessibility (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA).
 This means that as a user with accessible needs, when using MindMate website you can: 

• Change colours, contrast levels and fonts 
• Zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen and most images scaling without resolution loss 
• Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard 
• Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software 
• Navigate most of the website using a screen reader 
• Use most of the website even if Javascript is switched off 
• We scan the site weekly for broken links and look to fix them as soon as they are identified. 
• We also aim to make the website text as simple as possible to understand, using plain English, avoiding jargon and testing our content with young people. 
• AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. 

2. Non-accessible content

Some areas of the site or our content are not fully accessible yet. However we’re working on that as we want all content to be accessible as possible. These areas are: 

• Some of our games are not easy to use for people using alternative access tools, such as screen-readers or a keyboard. These are yet to be updated as we have prioritised updating content and getting essential information right first.
• Our Real Stories section is not easy to use for people using alternative access tools and in some areas does adhere to rules on colour contrast and content legibility. These are yet to be updated as we have prioritised updating content and getting essential information right first. 
• Older PDF and Word documents are not fully accessible. We are not required to fix these but we know some of them have really important information in, so we are working on replacing them with accessible PDFs or web pages. 
• Some of our videos do not include transcripts – yet. 
• External links and apps. We can’t guarantee that external resources we link to will comply with the same high levels of accessibility as our website. However, where possible we will always choose partners who offer accessible content.
• MindMate no longer supports Internet Explorer, as this browser is now at the end of its lifecycle. Read more information about the withdrawal of IE support. 
• All of our sites are built to run on and tested in all modern browsers but will gracefully fallback on outdated versions within reason. We test on up to date versions of:
  • Firefox
  • Chrome/Chrome mobile
  • Edge
  • Safari/Safari mobile
  • Native Android browser

3. What to do if you can’t access parts of this website and need help with accessibility?

If you need information from our website in a different format – for example accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille – please contact the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (Leeds office) Communication team. Please note that this inbox is not always monitored so please do not use this for any medical or clinical enquiries. 

4. What we’re doing to improve accessibility

• All content is written in accordance with our accessibility guidelines, to ensure that it is easy to read and performs well for users with different access needs and assistive technology. 
• Our content team runs monthly content checks on uploaded content to make sure it meets our criteria. 
• Our development agency carries out automated testing on all new elements to ensure mitigation against obvious issues. 
• All new components are also passed through a manual testing process to pick up any areas for improvement.
• In the future we plan to carry out testing with users with different needs and abilities, including those using assistive technology, such as screen-readers.
• Every 6 months, we carry out reviews of the site against latest guidance. These are carried out by our development agency, who also provides us with a report of any elements that could be improved upon. 
• This accessibility statement is updated every 6 months or sooner if anything changes with regards to the accessibility of our site, WCAG 2.0 AA guidance or non-compliant content. 

5. Getting in touch with us about accessibility

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of the MindMate website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page, you think we could do better, or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, we would like to hear from you. Please contact us with the URL of the page and the issue you’ve identified and we’ll look into it. Contact the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (Leeds office) Communications Team. 

Please note that this inbox is not always monitored so please do not use this for any medical or clinical enquiries. If you need to get in touch with us, we have more information on getting in touch. 

This statement was last reviewed and updated: May 2023