Accessibility

Accessibility

This website is run by the University of Sunderland 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 (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

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.

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

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

email: webteam@sunderland.ac.uk
call: +44 191 515 2424

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

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

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).

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible: for example:

  • Some elements are not keyboard accessible, and there are issues with keyboard focus
  • Most older PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The University of Sunderland 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.

Issues with 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’re accessible to a screen reader.

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

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

Issues with images

Some images don’t have appropriate alternative text. We are using a quality assurance application to identify these images and inform content editors of the requirement to change these. There will be occasions, however, when these changes have not yet been made. 

Issues with videos

Our live video streams don't have captions. We don’t plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations. However, we will add captions when we embed an edited version of the video streams on our website.

How we tested this website

This website is tested weekly using the quality assurance tool tenon.io to identify accessibility issues. 

3rd party platforms

We often create content which is hosted on 3rd party platforms. This includes:

  • content we create for social media, such as Facebook or Twitter
  • video which we host on YouTube or Vimeo
  • data we supply to national databases 

We are responsible for ensuring the content we supply meets accessibility requirements; however, we are not responsible for the accessibility of the platform itself.

For example, when we add video to one of our YouTube channels, we will ensure any subtitling, captions and audio-description are included as required. However, we are not responsible for the accessibility of the video player itself.

Links to other websites

We link to other websites that may offer benefit to our users. 

Library Resources Accessibility Links

We are not responsible for the accessibility of these or any other websites we do not manage.