The Active Lives survey is designed to be as accessible as possible for all respondents.
During the first few years, the functionality of the survey was improved to ensure that content was written and structured using accessible language.
The website and documents were assessed by an independent organisation who specialise in reviewing documents to ensure that that they were as easy to use as possible.
Lessons learned were shared with the GP Patient Survey Team, which already had extensive experience of reviewing content to ensure full accessibility, and they offered further advice about maximising accessibility.
Additionally, the online questionnaire was designed in a way that made it easy for people to adjust colour contrasts and increase font size.
Key FAQs were translated into British Sign Language and content was made available in alternative formats and languages when required.
This included the possibility to complete the survey on the telephone in English, Arabic, Polish, Portuguese, Mandarin and Slovak. The language options available were mentioned on the letters sent to potential respondents and were shown using the relevant script and language.
The English Federation for Disability Sport (EFDS) made recommendations to try and improve the accessibility of the survey. Based on these, an accessibility statement was added to the questionnaire homepage and translations of key FAQs into British Sign Language.