Accessibility policy

This accessibility statement applies to the NHS England website: welcome.cqrs.nhs.uk

The website is managed by the CSU Collaborative which represents the four NHS Commissioning Support Units (CSUs) on behalf of NHS England and is hosted by NHS Midlands and Lancashire (NHS ML) and Arden and Greater East Midlands (AGEM).

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website and we have designed it to be accessible. This means that you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts using browser or device settings
  • zoom in up to 400% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using a keyboard or speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

Feedback and contact information

If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact the CQRS Communications team by email, csu.digital@nhs.net

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy ready, audio recording or braille, email: csu.digital@nhs.net.

We’ll consider your request and aim to get back to you in five working days.

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 (the ‘accessibility regulations’).

If you contact us with a complaint and you are not happy with our response, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The CSU Collaborative is committed to making the CQRS website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

The following items are currently non-compliant, although we are actively working to address these issues as part of an ongoing programme to improve the accessibility of this website.

  • Some training videos do not have captions (1.1 Text alternatives for non-text content and 1.4 Distinguishable content video or audio content presentation).
  • Some training documents do not have text alternatives for images, which means some content is not available when using text-to-speech software (Text alternatives 1.1.1).

Other items which may affect the accessibility of this website include:

  • PDFs
    • The structure of the content is not always available to assistive technology, which makes the content difficult to understand and navigate for users of screen readers (Info and relationships 1.3.1)
    • The reading order of the content is not always logical, which means some content does not make sense when read out by text-to-speech software (Meaningful sequence 1.3.2)
    • Images do not always have text alternatives, which means some content is not available when using text-to-speech software (Text alternatives 1.1.1)
  • Embedded YouTube videos

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs do not meet accessibility standards. 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. Wherever possible, we avoid PDFs. Instead, we create content as structured web pages in HTML.

Videos

Some older videos may not meet accessibility standards because they do not have captions. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix videos published before 23 September 2020. We are actively working to add captions to any popular older videos.

From external websites 

Some parts of this site link to or use content provided by other websites and we cannot guarantee that these resources are fully accessible.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 13 January 2025 and was last reviewed on 26 February 2025.

Our website’s accessibility status is reviewed on a regular basis. This website was last tested by NHS ML in January 2025.

We have tested a representative sample of pages including the homepage, content pages and custom pages (searches, custom functionality) by checking the following:

  • Change colours, contrast levels and fonts.
  • Zoom in up to 400% 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.