How can you use this website?
This website is run by the University of Warwick. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website.
On this website, you should be able to:
- change colours, contrast levels and fonts
- zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
- navigate the website using just a keyboard, you can use links to skip over the navigation and get to content quicker
- navigate the website using speech recognition software
- listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)
- view the website on a tablet or mobile device in either orientation
We aim to make the website text as simple as possible to understand. We have provided a checklist to our content authors advising them to write in plain English and aim for a reading level of age 9.
If you have a disability then AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use.
We support our staff and students in their use of assistive software.
There is an additional Accessibility Statement for the University of Warwick Virtual Learning Environment (Moodle).
How accessible is this website?
We know some pages of this website aren't fully accessible:
- some Adobe PDF documents, for example, Library purchased digital e-resources created before September 2018
- live video streams don’t have captions and some videos may not have captions
- some web pages include slideshows that are hard to navigate via keyboard alone, to get from slide to slide, we are working to replace these with an accessible slideshow
- some web pages may have colour or contrast issues. We have given our content creators a checklist to follow, to avoid creating these issues in future
- Postgraduate students applying to Warwick via the Applicant Portal should note an issue using the Document upload buttons. The document upload buttons do not work for users who are only using a keyboard, as at 30th March 2020. We have identified a solution, and we are working to implement this as soon as possible. In the meantime, users who are unable to upload documents should contact appquery at warwick dot ac dot uk for assistance.
What should you do if you can't access or are having difficulty using this website?
We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. Please contact us if you have any problems. It helps if you can be specific and detailed, if there are things you like and find useful, it would be great to hear about them. To report accessibility problems or ask about anything to do with accessibility use the contact details below.
Contact Us: The accessibility team on webaccessibility at warwick dot ac dot uk
Please let us know if you require information in a different format. For example large print, audio recording or braille.
NOTE: If you are visiting the campus and need verbal directions you can call the University Reception on 024 765 23523, there are also maps and directions on our site.
When you contact us by email there is a process in place that will acknowledge your contact, tell you who is dealing with it and give you a timescale by which you can expect a reply.
Complaints
If you are unhappy with the response you receive having contacted us using the details above, you can make a formal complaint to the University using our procedure for Feedback and Complaints.
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).
The University of Warwick is committed to making this website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
This service is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
There is an additional Accessibility Statement for the University of Warwick Virtual Learning Environment (Moodle).
Non-accessible content
We are working to meet the compliance as specified in The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 by the September 2020 deadline. Meanwhile, the content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
Issues with technology
The vast majority of our website works correctly on any web technology. Here is a list of the web browsers we support and we test our website infrastructure in these browsers as a minimum along with tablets and mobile devices too.
For security reasons, we only support TLS 1.2 and higher security protocols, and this means that some older Web Browser will not show the site.
We're working hard on making our website more accessible. While we're doing this, you might find:
We aim to improve the education of our content editors on web accessibility best practice. We have given our web content creators a checklist to follow to encourage best practice with formatting, page structure and readability. We've also provided author guidance for all types of document creation. We are working on further training packages.
Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not have been written in a way that is accessible to a screen reader. Some of these PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages by September 2020.
The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.
Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
Inaccessible PDF resources we are aware of are:
- Pay climate - We've been checking these and the majority of them are partly accessible.
- The Funambulist - These PDFs have no tagging, headings, alt text, structure or reading order.
- Images on some departmental or service page(s) may not have alternative text. We have added a feature to our content editor so that all images on editing will need to be given an alt tag or tick a box to say the image is for decorative purposes only. Over time this will improve the volume of images without appropriate alt text. We aim to provide alt tags on all pages by September 2020. WCAG criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content
- Although we strongly discourage the practice there may be some content created deep within our site which has images of text or poor contrast. WCAG criterions 1.4.5 Images of Text and 1.4.3 Minimum Contrast
- We don’t plan to create a text alternative, captions, audio description or sign language interpretation to this older content as it was created before 23 September 2020 and therefore exempt from the regulations. We will do so for new recordings when the time comes.
- Older slideshows are currently hard to tab through, we are working on updating these to a new accessible slideshow. Slideshows tend to be used to decorate web pages rather than to provide important content. WCAG criterion 2.1.2 Keyboard trap
- Our web site includes an interactive map supplied by a third party, this is unlikely to be accessible, we will review the interactive map and request accessibility changes when the next major revision of the map occurs. Alternative map formats are available.
- Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag, we have a fix for this issue awaiting deploy. We aim to fix any other issues as we discover them by September 2020. WCAG criterion 2.5.3 Label in Name
- We make use of a free third party, open-source date picker within our calendar page template (Bootstrap 3 Datepicker). This generates some empty table header markup. This may have a negative effect on some users of assistive technology when they use a calendar page. On pages like this calendar for example.
- Postgraduate students applying to Warwick via the Applicant Portal should note an issue using the Document upload buttons. The document upload buttons do not work for users who are only using a keyboard, as at 30th March 2020. We have identified a solution, and we are working to implement this as soon as possible. In the meantime, users who are unable to upload documents should contact appquery at warwick dot ac dot uk for assistance.
PDFs and other documents
The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. Inaccessible PDF resources we are aware of are:
- Geopolitics of energy - These PDFs have no tagging, headings, alt text/attributes, structure or reading order. As these were created before 23 September 2018 we don't plan to fix these.
Live and prerecorded audio and video
1.1.1 (non-text content)
1.2.1 (audio-only and video-only - prerecorded)
1.2.2 (captions – prerecorded)
1.2.3 (audio description or media alternative - prerecorded)
1.2.5 (audio description - prerecorded)
1.2.6 (sign language - prerecorded)
1.2.7 (extended audio description - prerecorded)
1.2.8 (media alternative - prerecorded)
We don’t plan to create a text alternative, captions, audio description or sign language interpretation to this older content as it was created before 23 September 2020 and therefore exempt from the regulations.
How do we test this website?
Warwick is a large university with over 27,000 students and nearly 7,000 members of staff. This website is large, reflecting the rich diversity of research and education undertaken here. The management of content is currently via a distributed model, with the web content being edited and maintained by a wide number of staff in distributed departments and services. This makes the task of testing the whole site, at once, difficult. It has been challenging to get much of the website tested yet. We have:
- commissioned a Jisc accessibility snapshot that ran over some key areas of the website in March 2019 most of the issues identified have been addressed
- planned an accessibility audit to be done by AbilityNet over key areas of the website to identify issues and using assistive technology to find issues automated testing will not address
What we are doing to improve accessibility?
We've made these changes to our systems to improve accessibility. Our roadmap is as follows:
Auditing
- we are in discussion with AbilityNet about a detailed audit over key pages using assistive technology
- a snapshot audit of key pages was done by Jisc in March 2019, we've acted on most of the recommendations and that work should be completed soon
- we are doing routine checks of public web pages on our website that get more than 100 views a week, using an automated testing tool
- we are doing ad-hoc keyboard access testing and other manual checks that don't require assistive technology
- once all the auditing is completed over the coming year, we will action the findings
Training
- we have provided our content editors with a checklist to follow and we are working on more comprehensive training materials
- we will be encouraging our content editors to reduce the high volume of web pages so that auditing activities can be more easily managed
- we are advising developers on accessibility best practice
Site change
- we would like to more clearly divide internal-facing from public-facing web content to simplify our testing
- we would like to have fewer web pages on the website so that it is more manageable
- we would like editors of the website to be fully conversant with best practice
- we are looking for funding to enable more accessibility checking in the web page production process
This statement was prepared on 13 September 2019. It was last updated on the Last Revised date shown in the footer below.
