Giving feedback on health and care online should now be simpler for people contacting Healthwatch Norfolk.
The organisation gathers people’s experiences of health and social care and passes them on to decision-makers to help them shape services.
It wanted to make it much easier for people to share their views digitally.
Their website has now been totally revamped and special software installed to make it more accessible.
Alex Stewart, chief executive of Healthwatch Norfolk, said:
“It is still absolutely vital for us to be out and about in person chatting to people face-to-face and operating our phone helpline for people to both share their experiences and get additional advice and support.
“Equally we know that a lot of people do contact us digitally and we wanted to make sure that process is as seamless for them as possible.”
Healthwatch Norfolk collaborated with Poringland-based Designtec on the new website to ensure people could easily find where:
- to leave feedback about their experiences.
- find information about different support organisations and complaints processes
- and find out about Healthwatch Norfolk’s work.
ReciteMe
It has also worked with ReciteMe to improve accessibility on the website.
By pressing a button called Accessibility Tools on the top of the homepage, this will launch a program called ReciteMe.
This will translate webpages, read them aloud, or change colours and text styles to make it easier for people to see.
To get help on using ReciteMe, you can download the user guide here.
The ReciteMe system is used by other Healthwatch organisations in England as well as wide-ranging companies and local authorities like Delfont Mackintosh Theatres, Boots, Liverpool City Council and Great Western Railway.
Alex Stewart added: “We are not resting on our laurels and want to spend the next 12 months developing the way we analyse and map the thousands of pieces of feedback we get annually even more effectively.”
