Accessibility

Care has been taken to ensure that the site can be viewed at a magnification of 400% and that content reflows accordingly, across the website. The website responds well on desktop and on mobile to different size browsers. We have taken care to ensure that content is created and added according to responsive templates and reusable components. 

There are a very small number of pages where magnifcation and reflow are restricted (see Technical Information section below for more details).

All webpages make use of the main navigation header. This groups menu items into three distinct groups of navigation links. Both menu and submenu items can be accessed easily by keyboard.

There are different ways to navigate the site. You can:

• use the provided menu structures
• search for content
• use the breadcrumb trail to navigate back from a module

Our main website search and other searches across the website (Course/Staff/News/Events) have a consistent look and feel as well as operation. All searches work for keyboard-only users and focus states include search filters, where appropriate.

The website and the resources use header tags and labelled content regions to give pages a helpful information hierarchy. Users can benefit by:

• using browser plugins like HeadingsMap to swiftly navigate a menu of headings
• using screen reader functionality to browse by heading level

We have kept a consistent structure from page to page wherever appropriate and provide "Skip links" to allow repetitive navigable elements (e.g. the site menu) to be avoided.

All parts of the website, including menus and interactive resources can be navigated using a keyboard using keystrokes like Tab, Enter, Escape and the Arrow keys. The tab order is logical, and the currently focused item is highlighted for keyboard users.

Labelling makes it clear when sub-elements are available. Keyboard-only users are also able to cycle through the menus and close the main menu using the escape key.

Across the vast majority of the website, default colour contrasts meet accessibility guidelines.We have identified one element where this is not the case (see Technical Information section below for more details).

You can change the default background colours using browser plugins like HighContrast or ScreenShader.

Autoplaying videos and carousels can be distracting; we ensure none of ours autoplay. Media can be controlled by either mouse or keyboard. All our videos since 2018 have high quality captioning. We have tried to ensure that all new videos have had captions added prior to loading to streaming services in order to make them as accessible as possible.

We have taken care to ensure that appropriate descriptions have been added to website content elements that display links such as Read more or Find out more across the site for users of assistive technologies. Call-to-action controls and link navigation allow contextual information to be used.

We have ensured that all images across the site have been identified as either decorative or non-decorative and have alternative text descriptions according to their category.

The website has labels and instructions built in to the various types of webpages as well as elements on webpages to assist visually imparied users understand the purpose and content therein. In addition, labels and instructions are built into the website outlining the necessary webpage and element controls concerning use and navigation.

All the documents in the Policies and Procedures pages have been improved and pass the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Accessibility Checker.

A minority of our hyperlinks have non-unique text such as 'Download' or 'Click Here'. This is covered in more detail in the technical section below.

Some of our embedded online forms may be difficult to complete when using a screen reader. We use external, third party platforms for embedding or linking to online forms on the website to gather appropriate data from users.

Not all downloadable PDFs on the website are fully accessible. We are currently working to address this.

TEXT IS CLIPPED WHEN RESIZED

Some elements / components within elements on our pages clip the content at the edge of their container make the overflow invisible. The purpose of this success criterion is ot ensure that content is visually rendered so that it can be scaled and read directly with people with mild visual disabilities. This fails success critera 1.4.4 (Resize Text). We aim to fix this by April 2025.

MAGNIFCATION & REFLOW

A very small number of pages across the website prevent users from zooming-in (magnifying) or scaling content. These are the Virtual Tour pages and one HTTP Error 500 (Internal Server Error) webpage. These fail success critera 1.4.4 (Resize Text) and 1.4.10 (Reflow). We cannot fix the Virtual Tour webpages (see Disproportionate Burden section, below). However, we aim to fix the HTTP 500 Server Error page by April 2025.

ELEMENT IDS ARE NOT UNIQUE

There are certain webpage elements across the site where element IDs therein are not unique on the page itself. This may impair assistive technologies accurattely interpreting and parsing content. This fails success criteria 4.1.1 (Parsing). We aim to fix this by April 2025.

VISIBLE LABEL & ACCESSIBLE NAMES DO NOT MATCH

There are a number of pages where the accessible name of interactive elements do not match their visible labels. This fails success criteria Although this accessibility issue has been addressed in previous coding updates, it has been identified once more. This fails success critera 2.5.3 (Label in Name) and 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships). We aim to fix this by April 2025.

COLOUR CONTRAST

There are a very small number of webpages where we have identified one element as having insufficient colour contrast between displayed text and a coloured background. This fails success criteria 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum). We aim to fix this by April 2025.

EMBEDDED FORMS

Some of our embedded online forms may be difficult to complete when using a screen reader. Our forms are hosted by 3rd party solution providers and incorporated onto webpages as appropriate. We cannot fix these issues directly. In the meantime if you require a specific form please contact web@uws.ac.uk and request an accessible alternative version.

In addition our course search form in the Study section of the mega-navigation menu fails success criteria 4.1.1 (Parsing) Element ID is Not Unique.

In a very small number of pages on the website, alt tags are missing for forms embedded on webpages using inline iFrames. Providing iFrames with alternative text is really helpful for assistive technologies. This fails success criteria 1.1.1 Non-text Content. We plan to fix this by April 2025.

SEARCH FILTERS

Search filters are located on the website for: Event / News / Undergraduate Search / Postgraduate Search / Staff Directory filtering for your convenience. They fail success criteria 3.2.2 (On Input) for missing buttons and 1.3.1 (Info & Relationships) where filter options are not grouped. We plan to fix this by April 2025.

INLINE HYPERLINKS & BROKEN LINKS

We have taken care to ensure that descriptions for screen reader users have been added to elements that display links such as Read more or Find out more across the site for users of assistive technologies. However, there are other instances on the site hyperlink text is non-unique (eg Click here). We are working through the site to identify these and reformat the content concerned to try to eradicate this potential source of confusion for users of assistive technologies. This fails success criteria 2.4.4 (Link Purpose (In Context)). We plan to fix this by April 2025.

Some website content use same link name for links going to different destinations. These fail success criteria 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) Link text used for multiple different destinations. We plan to fix this by April 2025.

DOCUMENTS

The website contains a large number of downloadable PDFs. Not all of these PDFs are fully accessible.

These PDFs contain machine readable content, but have a number of additional issues to raise their accessibility up to the required standards. These PDFs typically fail accessibility guidelines on combinations of the following success criteria:

• 1.1.1 (Non-text Content), where the PDFs contain images which do not have alternative text specified
• 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships) and 2.4.6 (headings and labels), where the PDFs do not have tagged heading structures or table elements properly defined
• 1.3.2 (Meaningful Sequence), where the text in PDFs has been created using floating text boxes (e.g. using desktop publishing software) or no reading order has been specified, tab order has not been set, or incorporate lists throughout
• 1.4.3 (Contrast (Minimum)), where text may have been created in a colour which does not contrast enough with its background colour
• 2.4.2 (Page Titled), where this is not yet set or does not sufficiently describe the or content of the PDF
• 2.4.6 (Headings and Labels) and 2.4.10 (Section Headings), where PDFs have been created without bookmarks
• 3.1.1 (Language of Page), where PDFs do not have a language specified in them – please read all such PDFs as UK English

There may also be a very small number of PDFs which currently fail success criterion 1.4.5 (Images of Text), where they contain scanned text which may not have been converted to computer-readable text.

We are currently looking at solutions to address these issues.

We plan to complete this work by April 2025.

VIRTUAL TOURS

These are not currently keyboard accessible. This fails success criteria 2.1.1 (Keyboard). The virtual tour function was developed by a 3rd party. We cannot fix this (see Disproportionate Burden section below) but sighted keyboard users may find switching on Windows Mouse Keys in the Ease of access panel could help.

In addition, our videos which collectively form the virtual tours, sit on webpages that fail accessibility criteria 3.1.1 (Language of Page) and 1.3.1 (Info & Relationships) - No Top-level Heading on the Page. See Disproportionate Burden section below.

DESCRIPTIONS

A small number of webpages are reporting WAI-ARIA errors where a non unique ID has been used. These fail success criteria: 1.1.1 (Non-text Content), 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships), 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context), 3.3.2 (Labels or Instructions), and 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value) "Aria-describedby" has incorrect (ID) reference. We plan to fix this by April 2025.

LANDMARKS

A small number of our undergraduate course webpages generate accessibility warnings in relation to landmarks with identical names. These fail success criteria 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value) Landmarks with identical names. We plan to fix this by April 2025.

SEARCH LISTINGS

Our five search listing pages (Undergraduate Courses / Postgraduate Courses / News / Events / Staff Directory) have missing WAI-ARIA states/properties in their filters. These fail success criteria 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value) Missing required WAI-ARIA states or properties. We plan to fix this by April 2025.

PERSONALISED VERSION OF THE DIGITAL PROSPECTUSES

A fully accessible version (passed Adobe Acrobat Pro DC’s accessibility checker) of the digital prospectuses is available for all users to download.

The option to create a personalised version of the undergraduate digital prospectus has been created this year. Personalised versions are built with a PDF rendering engine supplied by a 3rd party. Despite the fact that all PDFs supplied to the 3rd party by the University pass accessibility checks, their rendering engine does not retain essential PDF accessibility features.

The 3rd party supplier of the personalised digital prospectus solution has indicated that they are assessing the viability of developing a new PDF rendering engine that will retain PDF accessibility features. However, they have not provided a delivery date for this new platform. This rendering engine is used by multiple universities to create downloadable prospectuses, so the supplier is seeking a solution that can be shared across all clients. A custom solution for the University was estimated to cost the University £60,000 which is a disproportionate burden at this time.

VIRTUAL TOURS

Our 360° virtual tours are not keyboard accessible, neither are they accessible to blind users. The latter would be extremely difficult to achieve technically. The former should be possible, and we are actively exploring more accessible interfaces.

In the meantime, we believe that the benefits of this partially accessible content for disabled people with mobility issues or anxiety issues outweigh the disadvantages and we offer 1:1 orientation training to blind students as part of our normal support.

WEB ENGAGEMENT FORMS

We use 3rd party platforms for all our enquiry and lead generating forms. At present, although these platforms have some support for screen readers, they are not fully accessible. For example, some input fields and select boxes have no built-in descriptions. These may fail a number of success criteria including: 1.3.1 (Info & Relationships), 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value).

We cannot fix these issues directly but we are in discussions with our suppliers with respect to their platform development roadmaps in relation to accessibility compliance.

In the meantime, if there are any forms that you need in another format, please contact web@uws.ac.uk and request an accessible MS Word version.

• Some videos published before 23 Sept 2020 may not have captioning.
• Live streamed events which are linked to from the website will not have captions.
  Office file formats* published before 23 September 2018, unless they are active and necessary to tasks that we are performing.
• PDFs before 2018 and archive PDFs (documents which are out of date and replaced with newer version but still published for archive purposes.).

* the term "office file formats" refers to a document in a format that is not intended primarily for use on the web but is included in web pages, e.g. Adobe Portable Document Format, Microsoft Office documents or their open-source equivalents.

The manual digital accessibility assessment of the website was undertaken between 23/09/2020 and 25/09/2020. Assessment was carried out using a variety of tools, including assistive technologies such as the NVDA screen reader. It was carried out by AbilityNet Ltd.

This website is built on the Umbraco CMS (version 7.15.2) with templated pages and reusable components. The assessment focused on reusable components and templates in order to identify accessibility issues that would need to be addressed for the site to be compliant with accessibility legislation and guidelines. The review had two components:

• A headline review of 10 pages using 10 accessibility criteria on each page and identify the components and templates that are reused across the site. These criteria are aligned to WCAG W3C Easy Checks methodology which will form part of the compliance monitoring process for the Public Sector Web Accessibility Regulations.
• Functional accessibility testing of 10 components found to be causing accessibility issues during the headline review. Whilst this testing is grounded in the WCAG 2.1 level AA standards, its primary purpose is to identify issues that cannot be found with automatic checkers and provide recommendations on how to resolve or mitigate these issues.

The website is also assessed using a sector-leading, automated website governance platform to identify website errors, warnings - Siteimprove.

Using the Siteimprove platform, an automated digital accessibility review of the website is undertaken every 5 days.