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Accessibility

Website accessibility statement

Using this website

This website is run by Buxton & Leek College, part of 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 500% without it spilling off screen
  • The website can be used by a screen reader
  • You can modify spacing of text using an extension such as Easy Read in Chrome

AbilityNet 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 Buxton &Leek College 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, 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 of text
  • PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software
  • Some of our videos don’t have edited captions
  • There is no ‘skip to main content’ button
  • Some of our buttons don’t show focus for keyboard-only users
  • Some elements on the page do not have sufficient colour contrast

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. Please contact us using our website accessibility information form if you:

  • Need information on this website in a different format such as accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille
  • Can’t view the map on our ‘contact us’ page
  • Find any problems that are not listed on this page
  • Think we are not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in two 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 our website’s accessibility

Buxton & Leek College, part of 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.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

While text can be zoomed or magnified, and text can be spaced out using an extension such as Easy Read in Chrome, 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).

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 marked up so they are 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 administrative processes. Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Video captions

Some of our videos don’t have accurate edited captions or transcripts. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.1 (audio-only and video-only pre-recorded), 1.2.2 (captions pre-recorded), 1.2.3 (audio description or media alternative pre-recorded) and 1.2.5 (audio description pre-recorded). The regulations do not apply to recorded videos published before 23 September 2020.

Additional accessibility considerations

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define three levels of conformance: level A, level AA and level AAA. Although our goal is WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance, we have also applied some level AAA success criteria:

  • Images of text are only used for pure decoration or where a particular presentation of text is essential to the information being conveyed
  • The purpose of each link can be identified from link text alone, except where the purpose of the link would be ambiguous to users in general
  • Functionality of the content is operable through a keyboard interface without requiring specific timings for individual keystrokes
  • Information about the user’s location within a set of web pages is available

How we tested this website

We carried out a mixture of automated and manual tests on a single random page on 20 September 2019 using the Accessibility Insights for Web app. The page passed 69% of the checks. We have also used the SiteMorse platform to run automated checks on a 250-page sample of the website.

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 20 September 2019. It was last updated on 20 September 2019.

Accessibility statement updates log

We first prepared this statement on 20 September 2019. We are logging every change we make to this page.

  • 20 September 2019: statement first published