We want everyone who visits the City, University of London website to feel welcome and find the experience rewarding.
This statement applies only to content hosted on the sub-domain ‘www.city.ac.uk’.
This website is run by City, University of London. 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.
How accessible this website is
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
- Embedded videos do not have captions or audio description
- PDFs (Portable Document Formats) and other documents are not fully compatible with screen readers and do not meet accessibility standards
- Audio streams do not have transcripts
- Embedded third-party widgets do not meet accessibility standards
- Images may not have appropriate alt descriptions
- You cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
- You may not be able to recognise the role of some elements across the website when using assistive technologies.
Feedback and contact information
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email the Web Content team.
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 3-5 working days.
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 the Web Development team.
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).
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
City, University of London 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 listed below.
Accessibility statements for other student digital services at City
Read the accessibility statements for other City digital platforms and services for students on the Accessibility blog.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
- Across the website some link text doesn’t make sense when read on its own (for example, ‘click here’), and there are instances where text is difficult to read (Success criterion 2.4.4 Link Purpose - In Context)
- Across the website some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content)
- Across the website, in content implemented using markup languages, IDs are not always unique or confirming to value values (4.1.1 parsing) and (4.1.2 Name, Role, Value).
- In content implemented using iframes we do not always provide a title (4.1.2 Name, Role, Value)
- In some forms we do not always provide a submit button (3.2.2 Predictability On input)
- In some instances the "Bold" tag is used to format text (1.3.1 Info and relationships).
We are working through this list of issues to remediate as much as we can ourselves. We launched a new version of our home page and site navigation in March 2023 and this will now be independently reviewed in the next three months. We will continue to address remaining high priority issues by June 2023. Medium and lower priority issues will be reviewed throughout 2023 and are planned into our Operational Roadmap.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
Live video
Live video streams during graduation do not have captions. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions – live).
We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.
Exceptions
Discover Uni widget
City is aware of accessibility issues with the Discover Uni widget, but is required to embed it in undergraduate course pages.
How we tested this website
The team incorporate the WCAG 2.1 AA standard into every stage of development when designing and building new pages.
We employ two qualified, full-time user experience professionals, who advise on usability best practice and conduct expert and accessibility tests on every new page template. We test pages with multiple browsers, on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android, with and without screen reader software.
We run user testing sessions online and in-person at the City Interaction Lab.
We subject almost every page of the City, University of London website to automated testing with the axe accessibility checker. For extensive archives using the same template, like news articles, we test a random sample of 10% of the pages published in the last 12 months.
We use site governance software to track accessibility issues across every page of the site.
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
We want our website to offer the best experience possible for all of our users.
- We are doing a blend of automated and manual checks with the help of Siteimprove, WAVE, ARCTool and Axe accessibility checkers to monitor and keep track of the fixes we need to do across the website
- We are will be hiring an accessibility agency to do an audit of our website within the second quarter of 2023 (April-June)
- We are advising developers on accessibility best practice and our developers are working through the issues raised in the audits.
- We are working with our suppliers to fix issues and think about future developments
- We have recently updated our content guidelines to include accessibility
- 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 also updating the ways in which we provide training and best practice to those working on our website.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on . It was last reviewed on .