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Accessibility Statement

Web Accessibility – using our Science Oxford website

This accessibility statement applies to our website www.scienceoxford.com

This website is run by The Oxford Trust. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. We have made the text as simple as possible to understand and we have updated colours, contrast levels and font sizes so they are easier to read.

You should be able to do things like:

  • 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).

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, but we are working with our web developers to improve this over time. In particular, we know that you may encounter:

  • text will not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window
  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • some PDF and office documents are not fully formatted to be accessible to screen reader software
  • some videos may not have closed captions or transcripts
  • some of our online forms and menus are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • some elements of our online forms do not have accessible labels
  • there is a limit to how far you can magnify some images
  • some older images may not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format:

Email [email protected]

Call 01865 810000

If you cannot view the Google map on our ‘Visiting’ pages, call or email us for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: [email protected]. We will respond in no more than 10 working days but hope to do it more quickly in most cases.

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 are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Oxford Trust is committed to making its websites 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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

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

Navigation and accessing information

  • There is no way to skip the repeated content in the page header
  • It is not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content
  • It is not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping

Interactive tools and transactions

  • Some interactive forms may be difficult to navigate using a keyboard
  • Some of our public visit ticketing pages are built and hosted through third party software in Eventbrite

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information, and with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal.

PDFs and other documents

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.

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.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Forms

Some elements of our online forms do not have accessible labels. We plan to change the way forms work on the website in the near future.

 

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

  • We continuously work with our web developers to ensure all our websites are accessible
  • We are implementing accessibility training within the Communications team
  • We are raising general accessibility awareness across the organisation
  • We are including captioning in videos and investigating video transcripts
  • We are slowing down moving banners
  • We are improving webpage titling
  • We add text alternatives for all informative images (purely decorative images will not have alt text – https://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/images/decorative/).
  • We are incorporating more audio options into the website
  • We have created and continue to update an Accessibility Resources web page in partnership with local groups
  • We plan to change the way forms work on the website in the near future.

How our website accessibility is assessed

We work with web developers to regularly assess the accessibility of our websites, using tools including Google Lighthouse and Pa11y.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

Our website was updated and this statement was prepared on 19th December 2023.