Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
You may experience difficulties on our website due to issues we need to fix. These issues are not compliant with WCAG 2.1, some not meeting even the minimum standard (level A). The most common of these failures are:
- items such as buttons and forms do not always have text alternatives to let screen readers know they are there and what they do, while some decorative items do have text alternatives. This fails success criterion 1.1.1, Non-text content.
- what you can select and click on is not always communicated to you if you use assistive technologies or the tab key to navigate. This fails success criterion 4.1.2, Name, Role, Value.
- information and how it is organised in menus and on pages is not always communicated to you if you use a screen reader. This fails success criterion 1.3.1, Information and Relationships.
- you cannot always choose all the options on a page if you use the tab key to navigate, such as filters for searches. This fails success criterion 2.1.1, Keyboard.
- the order that you have to move through interactive parts of pages with the tab key is not always logical, for instance on 'Find a person' and 'Find a course'. This fails success criterion 2.4.3.
- an order in which content can be read out that will make sense is not always signalled. This fails success criterion 1.3.2, Meaningful Sequence.
- on some pages, such as News and Events, you may not be able to adjust the text spacing, failing success criterion 1.4.12; the colour contrast is too low, failing success criterion 1.4.3, and you may not be clearly told about headings and links, failing success criteria 2.4.6 and 2.4.4.
Disproportionate burden
There are currently no issues on southampton.ac.uk that we consider to be a disproportionate burden to fix.
Content that's not within the scope of accessibility regulations
Some content types are outside the scope of the regulations. We aren’t required to fix these, including:
- older documents like PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to our services
- interaction maps, as long as an accessible alternative is given
- live video streams with captions
Third-party content
We often do not have control over the accessibility of third-party services and content across our website. This includes things like:
- forms
- timetables
- calendars
- social media feeds
But we’re working with vendors and reviewing our procurement processes to make sure as many people as possible can use these services.
We ask third-party suppliers to provide links to their Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR). They can do this using the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). The template supports Section 508, EN 301 549 (PDF), and W3C/WAI WCAG.
We support the searchBOX project, which provides a database of accessibility information about third-party vendors across the public sector. You can search for third-party accessibility statements using the free searchBOX finder tool.