Accessibility statement

Our aim 

The Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) is committed to making our websites accessible and usable for everyone. This includes people with visual, hearing, motor, cognitive and other disabilities, as well as those who use assistive technologies.

We aim to ensure that everyone can access our services and information independently, regardless of their circumstances or needs.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA.

Wherever possible, Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) will aim to adhere to level AA of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines, which states that sites should be:

In order to ensure accessibility on our website, we also:

• Have internal procedures that take accessibility into account.
• Train and support our employees who create documents and content, with guidance on accessibility best practice.
• Have clear organisational accessibility targets and responsibilities.
• Ensure new content is created with accessibility in mind.
• Carry out regular audits of our website using automated and manual accessibility testing tools, including screen readers, to ensure our content is inclusive.

As part of our efforts to achieve WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, we use our Optimizely Website CMS as an ongoing monitoring service.

Scope of this statement  

This statement applies to the HCPC’s main website (www.hcpc-uk.org) and the HCPTS website (www.hcpts-uk.org).

It does not cover third-party platforms or websites that we may link to, which may have their own accessibility statements and standards.

Known issues 

While we aim to meet the highest accessibility standards, we are aware of the following issues on our websites and are working to resolve them: 

• Keyboard navigation - some interactive elements may not be easily accessible by keyboard alone 
• Dynamic font size and zoom - when users adjust font size or zoom in, some text and layout may not respond as expected 
• ARIA labels and heading structure – some pages are being reviewed to improve consistency in headings and ARIA attributes for screen readers 
• Older PDF and word documents - some historical files may not be fully accessible to screen reader users 
• Video and multimedia - not all video content currently includes captions or text transcripts 
• Third-party content - external platforms or embedded content may not fully meet the same accessibility standards as our own.

If you experience any of these issues or require assistance, we encourage you to contact us via web@hcpc-uk.org so we can help and learn from your feedback.

Browser compatibility  

To help protect your data and provide the best user experience, we only support modern browsers such as: 

• Microsoft Edge
• Google Chrome 
• Firefox
• Safari (version 10 and above) 

Our online services may not function correctly if you use unsupported browsers such as Internet Explorer or older versions of Safari. 

For the best security and functionality, you should keep your web browser up to date with the latest updates.

Further support

We want our content to be accessible to everyone. If you need information in a different format such as large print, audio, braille, Easy Read, or a different language, please visit the relevant pages. 

We also support the Welsh Language Scheme and can provide some services and publications in Welsh.

Last updated: 6 October 2025