Accessibility Statement

Our commitment

We want everyone to be able to research surgery here, including people who use a screen reader, navigate by keyboard, magnify the page, or need reduced motion. The site is built to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA, and that is the standard we test against.

What we do

• Every page has a logical heading structure and a skip link to the main content.
• All interactive elements can be reached and operated with a keyboard, and the focused element is always visible.
• Images carry alternative text; decorative images are hidden from assistive technology.
• Colour contrast meets the AA ratio, and colour is never the only way information is conveyed; verification, for example, is shown with an icon and a label, not just a green tint.
• Animation respects the "reduce motion" setting of your device.
• Text can be enlarged to 200 percent without loss of content.
• Prices in tables use figures aligned for reading down a column, and tables have proper headers.
• The site works in right-to-left languages.

Known limitations

• Some embedded third-party video players may not meet every criterion; their content is also available as text on the page.
• PDF documents linked from sources are hosted by their publishers and we cannot guarantee their accessibility.

Tell us about a problem

If any part of the site is hard for you to use, we want to know. Contact us using the details on the Legal Notice page, tell us the page and what happened, and we will respond within ten working days. If you need any content in another format, ask.

Enforcement

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may be able to contact the body responsible for enforcing accessibility requirements in your country; in the EU these are designated under the Web Accessibility Directive and the European Accessibility Act, and in the United Kingdom the Equality and Human Rights Commission enforces the Equality Act 2010.

Testing

The site is tested with automated tools on every release and by hand with a screen reader and keyboard-only navigation on a regular schedule. This statement is reviewed when the site changes significantly.