Accessibility statement

Accessibility statement for www.brookes.ac.uk

This accessibility statement applies to the main website www.brookes.ac.uk which is run by the Oxford Brookes University. You will find more specific statements on other individual university websites.

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 400% without the text spilling off the screen
navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
navigate most of 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)

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. 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 are aware some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

older PDFs and Word documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software
live video streams do not have captions
some third-party content not created by the university
some interactive content (this includes maps, charts and other features)
some of our pages don’t use headings appropriately

Feedback and contact information

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: webdev@brookes.ac.uk.

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, audio recording or braille, please email webdev@brookes.ac.uk.

We will consider your request and get back to you within 5 working days.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contact us

Web team

webdev@brookes.ac.uk

Technical information about this website's accessibility

Oxford Brookes University is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

The website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard.

This website is partially compliant with the WCAG 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

We regularly audit our web content using tools that test for up to date accessibility standards, and work with our content editors and web developers to correct issues that this testing flags on an ongoing basis.

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

The content that is not accessible is outlined below with details of:

the accessibility problem(s)
where it fails the success criteria, and
when we plan to fix the problem

PDFs and other documents published after September 2018

The site contains PDF files published after September 2018 that do not meet accessibility standards and may contain content that should be available in an accessible format such as HTML. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships), 1.3.2 (Meaningful Sequence), 1.4.3 (Contrast (Minimum)), 2.4.2 (Page Titled) and 3.1.1 (Language of Page). We have implemented a strategy to better manage the PDFs we produce and ensure that content editors are given guidance to produce PDFs that are accessible.

Page structure

To address these issues, we are improving our web templates to make it easier for our content editors to create accessible content. We also regularly audit our website and work with content editors to correct them when they are found.

Some pages have headings that don’t follow a logical order. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.10 (Section Heading).

Some pages have empty headings or elements styled as titles but not marked up as headings. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.6 (Headings and Labels) and 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships).

Some pages have tables which are marked up incorrectly and do not have row or column headers. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships).

Some links are empty, contain an image with no alternative text or do not adequately describe the image. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.4: (Link Purpose (In Context)) and 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value).

Some pages use the same link text for different destinations This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose).

Some lists are empty or are marked up incorrectly with role=”presentation”. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships).

Fragment identifiers have been used more than once. For example, an id on a page is not unique. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.3.1 (Information and Relationships).

Images, video and audio

To address these issues, we regularly audit our website and work with content editors to correct them when they are found.

Images on some pages do not always have suitable image descriptions. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content). When we publish new content we make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Some pages have alternative text for an image which is identical to the link text. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content).

Some images may contain pictures of text. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.4.5 (Images of text).

Course pages carousel widget controls cannot be accessed by keyboard and do not provide a visual indication when they are focused on by keyboard navigation. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.1.1 (Keyboard) and 2.4.7 (Focus Visible). We are improving our templates and are due to have resolved this issue by the end of January 2025.

Some videos do not have captions or use automatically generated captions, which may be inaccurate. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded)).

Some audio content does not have a transcript or other text equivalent This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.2.1 (Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded)).

We aim for all audio and video content to have captions or transcripts. Please contact us if you require an accessible alternative to our audio or video content.

Tabs

We are aware that there is an issue with tabs because the elements have focusable descendants. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value). We are improving our templates and are due to have resolved this issue by the end of January 2025.

Accessible Rich Internet Applications

Some of our pages are using incorrect ARIA attributes. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value) and 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships). We are improving our templates and are due to have resolved this issue by the end of January 2025.

Not all content including the cookie bar is inside landmarks on the site. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships) and WAI-ARIA authoring practices. We are working with third party providers to resolve this issue.

Embedded Third-party content

Our site contains third-party content. We do not have control over and are not responsible for the accessibility of this content but we will work with the third-party to improve its accessibility.

Some frames are missing descriptive, meaningful and unique titles. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.1 (Bypass Blocks) and 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value). We regularly audit our website for instances of this issue and work with content editors to correct it when it occurs.

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

PDFs and other documents published before 23 September 2018

The accessibility regulations do not 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. We have implemented a strategy to help our content editors to produce new PDFs or documents that are accessible.

Live video

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

Maps

Online maps and mapping services are exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Third party content not within our control

Our course pages use the ‘Discover Uni’ widget to display key stats in a carousel. It is a requirement that we display these widgets on our course pages, but we are unable to edit them to make them accessible. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.2.2 (Pause, Stop, Hide) and 1.4.3 (Contrast (Minimum)).

Embedded video players like Vimeo or YouTube, Flickr galleries and embedded Google Maps.

Where we have used paid for third party content and functionality, we are working with the third-party to improve its accessibility.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

To improve accessibility, we:

carry out internal tests for compliance with WCAG 2.2 level A and level AA
ensure the accessibility of new PDFs before they are published
train staff to ensure they are aware of the importance of accessibility
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 August 2019. It was last reviewed on 19 December 2024.

This website was last tested on 15 December 2024 against the WCAG 2.2 AA standard. The test was carried out by the Oxford Brookes University web team using the website governance tool Siteimprove. Further manual tests and quality assurance was carried out by our web team.

Using Siteimprove, we have tested all pages across the website. We run weekly crawls of the website and will update this statement each month as any issues are resolved or identified.

Last updated 19 December 2024.