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Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to durhamsu.com

This website is run by Durham Students’ Union. 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 300% 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
  • focus on specific sections of page content
  • switch to a text only version at any point.

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible the website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • the text will not reflow in a single column when you change the font-size, and some content and layouts may be negatively affected. However, website is responsive to all tablets and mobile phones
  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • some videos do not have captions. If you find a video that does not, please let us know and we will provide a transcript, or a video with subtitles
  • You may have difficulty navigating some of our pages with just a keyboard, notably, the study space and wellbeing maps, and the campaigns toolkit
  • you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format, then email info@durhamsu.com. We’ll consider your request and get back to you when we can.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

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: info@durhamsu.com.

Please provide as much information as possible such as the page you are on (with a link) and a description of the issue you have found.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Durham Students’ Union 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

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

  • Not all images will have descriptive text, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails 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 are some webinars present on our site that do not provide subtitles when viewing. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4. We plan to add a transcript for the webinars on https://www.durhamsu.com/main-menu/voice/student-officer-and-trustee-elections by December 2020.
  • Some of the content on the interactive pages are more difficult to navigate with the keyboard such as the wellbeing map, study space map, and campaigns toolkit. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1 and 2.1.3 for keyboard accessibility. Where possible, alternative resources have been provided, and there is the ability to change the webpage to text only.

Disproportionate burden

  • It’s not possible for users to change text size of the page (up to a certain size) without negatively affecting the readability of some of the content and stop it from overlapping.

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

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 December 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are committed to improving our website accessibility for all users. We have recently taken steps to address this by:

  • implementing an accessibility toolbar to provide people with helpful tools to access our content, including text-to-speech reader, contrast and font changes, text-only version of webpages.
  • reviewed pages with videos, and images to ensure captions, transcripts and alternative text are provided.
  • Adding last reviewed dates to our key information pages to show we are regularly checking and updating
  • Publishing a site map to provide links to all our pages throughout the site.

We plan to:

  • Check videos throughout the site do not autoplay
  • Constantly review and ensure all new content published provide alternative text
  • Review the interactivity of some pages to ensure the keyboard accessibility is improved.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 15 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 15 September 2020.

This website was last tested on 10 September 2020. The test was carried out by Durham Students’ Union.

To test the accessibility of our site, we decided on a sample of pages to test. We tested the following pages due to the heavy content nature, and being our main pages providing key information to students: