Cookie consent, WCAG and NHS content on dental websites

Compliance on a UK dental website is not a footer badge. It is whether a patient can refuse analytics cookies and still book, whether a screen reader can find the fees, and whether an NHS or mixed practice publishes the information people are entitled to before they travel. These duties come from different places (UK GDPR and PECR, WCAG as the practical accessibility bar, NHS and CQC expectations for public information) and they collide on the same homepage.

Cookies that do not trap the book

Consent has to be as easy to refuse as to accept. A banner that covers the Book button until the patient agrees to marketing cookies is the pattern that gets practices into trouble and, more immediately, loses the emergency caller. Load booking and clinical content without advertising tags. If the chat tool is not essential, it waits. Name the third parties in the policy in language a practice manager can defend.

WCAG in the rooms that matter

You do not need a perfect AAA trophy. You do need contrast on moss-and-cream palettes, visible focus states, forms with labels, error text that does not say “invalid”, and a booking iframe that is not a keyboard dead-end. Alt text should describe the clinical image, not repeat “image”. Autoplay video with no controls is a migraine, not a brand moment.

Test with a keyboard and with the font size bumped. Test the cookie banner, the mobile nav and the form. Those three are where dental themes usually fail.

NHS and mixed-practice content

If you provide NHS dentistry, say so in plain language: who you can accept, how to register, opening hours, charges or a link to current NHS dental charges, and how to complain. Do not bury band fees behind a private veneer slider. If you are mixed, draw a hard line between what is NHS and what is private before the first “Book a smile consultation” button.

CQC registration details and the named manager belong on the site, not in a PDF from 2018. Accessibility and privacy statements should be findable from the footer without a hunt.

One pass that fixes most of it

Inventory every script the homepage loads. Mark each essential or not. Rewrite the banner. Add real labels to the enquiry form. Publish fees and NHS status where a tired person would look. Then stop adding tools that undo the pass. Most “compliance projects” on dental sites are just this, done once, with someone willing to say no to a fourth pixel tracker.

The banner is a product decision

Choose a consent tool you can configure without a developer every time marketing wants a new pixel. Reject-all must work. The cookie policy must list what is actually present, not a template for an American shop. If you cannot explain a tag in one sentence, delete it. Dental sites do not need half the advertising stack a fashion brand uses. They need a bookable, readable page and a way to count which treatment URL produced a call.

Remember that some patients will use the site on a shared phone, in a language that is not the one you wrote, with a broken hand. That is not an edge case in a family practice. It is Tuesday. Accessibility work is for them, not for a badge in the footer.

NHS language that does not hide

If the list is closed, say it at the top, and say what a private route looks like without dressing it as a loophole. If you take urgent NHS patients on certain days, publish the rule. Link current national charges rather than hard-coding last year’s bands and forgetting. Explain how to complain and how to contact Healthwatch or the commissioner if that is the path you use. This is dull. It is also the content CQC inspectors and tired parents both look for.

Do not use “NHS dentist” as a Meta keyword if you are not offering that service. The website and the ads have to tell the same story as the waiting-room poster. When they diverge, the poster is the one the inspector can photograph, and the website is the one the patient screenshots.

Forms that a keyboard can finish

Tab through the enquiry form on a laptop with the mouse unplugged. If you cannot reach send, neither can a lot of your patients. Autocomplete should work on name, email and phone. Date pickers should not trap focus. The error on an empty phone field should say “Enter a phone number”, not “input invalid”. This is WCAG in the only place it usually matters on a dental site: the action you asked them to take.

Then do the same on the cookie panel. If reject is only reachable with a mouse and a sharp eye, you do not have consent. You have a dark pattern with a cream background.