Terms and conditions

Accessibility

We have designed this website to be accessible, so that as many people as possible can use the website.

You can contact us on R&DComms@gstt.nhs.uk if you have problems accessing information on this website, or would like any of our work in a more accessible format.

How you can use this website

On this website, you should be able to:

• zoom in up to 400% with text staying visible on the screen
• navigate the website using most speech recognition software in line with accessibility guidance
• read most of the website using a screen reader, including the latest versions of JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver
• read most of the website on devices without a screen, though with some changes to appearance.

What we do to help you

• The design of the website is consistent to help you find your way around. Every page has a top level navigation bar, search function and breadcrumb bar (under the top level navigation, to help you see where you are in relation to the homepage).

• The site’s colours, fonts, and font size were selected to make sure they passed accessibility standards. This was tested to comply with accessibility guidance using the website https://contrastchecker.com/
• We’ve made the website text as simple as possible to understand, using plain English wherever possible. Some of our content is technical, and contains scientific terms and language. In some instances we have not been able to simplify the wording without changing the meaning of the text.

• All of our images should contain alternative text (alt text), for people using screen readers or text-only browsers.
• We try to make sure that our links make sense out of context. This is important for screen readers for example, where links can be displayed as a list.
• We use headers and bullet points to help you to scan the information on our pages.
• We try to make sure that all our information is easy to read.

If you have a problem accessing any documents then AbilityNet has advice to help you make your device easier to use.

How we keep this website accessible

In December 2019, we commissioned the digital agency Kino Creative to undertake a review of our website www.guysandstthomasbrc.nihr.ac.uk and associated microsites to bring them in line with the perceivable, operable, and understandable elements detailed in the WCAG2.1 Accessibility Checklist.

Ongoing issues and how we are addressing these:

• Many older news posts or events contain broken links which do not resolve – we do not intend to resolve these as it is a disproportionate burden.
• Some links on the site are not currently formatted in a compliant manner and we aim to fix these as soon as possible.
• PDFs are not able to comply with the requirements of the web accessibility standard, and we do not generally upload new PDFs. For our publications, such as our Research snapshots and brochures, we aim to provide information in both a HTML format and a printable PDF format.

Non-Accessible Document Log

Some documents on our site are not currently accessible. These are listed below, along with the reason.

Cookies

Cookies are small pieces of data that are gathered from the device you use to visit our website, for example your computer or mobile phone. Cookies are created to improve your experience of websites, for example they are needed for shopping carts or if you visit a site where you need to log in.

Cookies can be classified into persistent or session and first party or third party, explained below.

• Session cookies are created temporarily when you a visit a website, for example to remember your information entered in a form when navigating to different pages. They do not contain any personal information about you and are deleted when you leave the site.
• Persistent cookies (also called a stored or permanent cookie) are used to collect information such as web surfing behaviour or preferences for a specific website. These cookies are not deleted when you leave the website, but expire after a set period.
• First or third party cookies – these describe whether the cookies are issued by the website that you are currently visiting (first party) or by a different site (third party).

Our use of cookies

We do not use cookies to collect personal information about you or to identify individual users. Any cookies used by this website are either on a per session basis or to help us monitor our website, to improve it for future visitors.

Content management system cookie

WordPress uses a number of different cookies to help it display content and manage users.

Name: wordpress_logged_in_{hash}
Expires: when the user exits the browser
Type: Persistent, first party

Name: wordpress_{hash}
Expires: when the user exits the browser
Type: Persistent, first party

Name: wordpress_settings-1
Expires: when the user exits the browser
Type: Session, first party

Name: wordpress_settings-time-1
Expires: when the user exits the browser
Type: Persistent, first party

Name: wordpress_test_cookie
Expires: when the user exits the browser
Type: Persistent, first party

Google Analytics cookies

Google Analytics sets a number of cookies to help us evaluate the use of our website, for example the number of visitors we have and the pages visited. Full details are available from the Google Analytics website.

• _ga
  _gat
• _gid
• 1P_JAR
• YSC
• VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE
• PREF
• LOGIN_INFO
• IDE
• APISID
• DV
• SEARCH_SAMESITE
• CONSENT
• NID
• __Secure-3PSID
• __Secure-3PAPISID
• SIDCC
• SSID
• SID
• HSID
• APISID
• SAPISID
• __Secure-3PSIDCC

Why is this important?

The EU privacy law came into effect on 26 May 2011 and the UK government gave website owners until 25 May 2012 to comply. This law means that we must let you know what cookies we use. The law aims to give you greater control over your online privacy. For more information, visit the The Information Commissioner’s website.

Controlling cookies

You can control whether to accept or refuse cookies and to delete cookies that have already been set.

If you choose not to accept or to disable our cookies, you may not be able to use some site features.

Changing your cookie settings in your browser

To control the way your device manages cookies, go to your browser settings. The links below are designed to help but are not exhaustive:

• Changing cookie settings in Firefox
• Changing cookie settings in Internet Explorer
• Changing cookie settings in Google Chrome
• Changing cookie settings in Safari (OS X)
• Changing cookie settings in Safari (iOS)
• Changing cookie settings in Android