Accessibility statement

  • Accessibility statement for www.brookes.ac.uk

    This accessibility statement applies to the website at www.brookes.ac.uk.

    This website is run by the Oxford Brookes University. The University is in the process of developing a new website. Some sections of the website have been relaunched on the new system.

    We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

    • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
    • zoom in up to 200% with text being visible on the screen and most images will scale without loss of resolution
    • navigate this website with a keyboard and speech recognition software
    • read most of the website using a screen reader or devices without a screen, like a braille computer
    • skip links to the main content of a page with a keyboard
    • use the website when JavaScript is turned off

    We have made the website text as simple as possible to understand and aim for a reading age of a 12 year old.

    We use some technical or university terms where there is no easier wording we can use without changing what the text means.

    AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

    How accessible this website is

    We know that some areas will need work to be fully accessible:

    • Most older PDFs are not fully accessible to screen reader software
    • Embedded third-party widgets do not meet accessibility standards
    • Images may not have appropriate alt descriptions
    • Live video streams do not have captions

    Feedback and contact information

    We've designed our content to be as accessible as possible but if you need content in a more accessible format please contact us by email webdev@brookes.ac.uk.

    Reporting accessibility problems with this website

    If you have any problems accessing content which isn't listed on this page or think that we're not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations then please email webdev@brookes.ac.uk to let us know. We will consider your request and get back to you within 10 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, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

    Technical information about this website's accessibility

    Oxford Brookes University are committed to making our websites and mobile applications accessible, in accordance with The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 No.952.

    Compliance status

    This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG) AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

    Non-accessible content

    We are aware of the following issues on our site:

    Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

    Video, audio and images

    • Not all images have appropriate alternative text.
    • Some images may contain pictures of text.
    • There is no mechanism to pause or stop scrolling content.

    Text and content

    • Some tables do not have the correct markup for headers.
    • Some pages don’t have a top level heading, have empty headings or heading order is not correct.
    • Not all of our content reaches our target reading age of 12. years old. We are currently updating content and this will be updated by September 2021.
    • Some pages contain maps that provide location information that is not searchable by sight impaired or keyboard only users. We have added directions next to these but if you require assistance please contact us.

    Documents

    Most of the PDFs and Word documents that have been published before 23 September 2018 are non-compliant.

    Links

    • Not all link text makes sense when read on its own (for example 'click here').
    • Some pages have multiple links with the same link text but different destinations on one page.

    Forms

    Some pages have form fields with no labels.

    Colour contrast

    Some pages have colour contrast issues.

    Disproportionate burden

    At present there are no accessibility problems that we consider to be a disproportionate burden.

    Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

    Older PDFs and other documents

    Documents that were published before 23 September 2018 and are not essential to providing our services are exempt from the regulations.  We plan to make any essential documents accessible or replace them with HTML pages by September 2020.

    Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

    Live video

    We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

    What we are doing to improve accessibility

    We use SiteImprove to continually monitor and correct accessibility issues. We are currently in the process of developing a new website. As we migrate content to the new system, issues listed in this statement will be resolved.

    We also conduct manual testing against known accessibility issues which are not able to be found through automated testing.

    The university website consists of many related sub-sites: such as our student record system and our helpdesk application. Accessibility statements for such sub-sites can be found locally for each of these.

    Preparation of this accessibility statement

    This statement was prepared on 19/08/2019 by the EU Directive on Accessibility for websites and applications Working Group (EDAWG) and then formally endorsed by the Quality and Learning Infrastructure Committee (QLIC).

    Last update

    This statement was published on 19 August 2019. This page was last updated on 14 May 2020.