Website accessibility statement
Using this website
The Social Sciences Hub website is run by the University of Derby. We want as many people as possible to be able to use the site and are committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. For example, that means you should be able to:
- You can zoom text to at least 200% without it spilling off screen
- You can navigate using just a keyboard
- The website can be used by a screen reader
AbilityNet (https://abilitynet.org.uk/) has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. AbilityNet is a UK charity that exists to change the lives of disabled people by helping them to use digital technology at work, at home or in education.
Measures to support accessibility
We are using the following measures to ensure accessibility of the University of Derby website:
- We include accessibility within our internal policies
- We assign clear accessibility targets and responsibilities
- We employ formal accessibility quality assurance methods
We tested our website for accessibility during the design process, for example with a partially sighted student, and we carry out similar testing on the live site.
How accessible is our website?
We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible:
- You can’t modify line height or spacing of text
- PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software
- Videos don’t have captions
- Live video streams don’t have captions
What to do if you can’t access parts of this website or have a complaint
We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website.
If you have any issues with inaccessible content or are unable to obtain an accessible version, or you feel the need to complain about our site and content accessibility, please contact us in the first instance by emailing tel@derbyac.uk.
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 15 working days.
Enforcement procedure
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint after following the process set out above, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
Technical information about our website’s accessibility
The University of Derby is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
The Content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons:
Non-accessible content
The theme used for this wordpress site is not designed to be accessible although it does work to some extent with browser based screen readers.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
- Accessibility problems
- Which of the WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria the problem fails on
- When you plan to fix the problem
PDFs are not tagged in accordance with accessibility guidelines. We are aiming to move away from PDFs to more accessible formats.
Some videos do not have captions. We are working to add captions where and whenever possible.
While text can be zoomed or magnified, it is not possible for users to modify text spacing or line height. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.12 (text spacing). We are looking at a solution to this issue.
Some images don’t have a text alternative, so the information in them isn’t available to people using a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). We plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2020. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.
There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option). This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.1 (bypass blocks).
Disproportionate burden
We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information, and with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations.
Our websites contain a large proportion of downloadable PDF, embedded video and other files. Content is provided both by Staff and Students from across the University alongside 3rd Parties.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
PDFs and other documents
Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards. For example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value). The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential for active administration purposes relating to tasks we perform as a Public Body.
However, some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.
Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
In the meantime, you can always contact us by emailing tel@derby.ac.uk to request a copy that is accessible for you and we will do our best to make this available without delay.
Additional accessibility considerations
How we tested this website
This website was last tested on 12 February 2020. The test was carried out on a sample of eight pages by the TEL team at Derby University.
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
We have a rolling programme of updating content in accordance with the guidelines set out by the WCAG.
This statement was prepared on 12 February 2020. It was last updated on 12 February 2020.