Website accessibility statement in line with Public Sector Body (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
The LibGuides and LibCal websites are run by St George’s, University of London, using the 3rd party Springshare platform.
This statement applies to the LibGuides and LibCal websites. For a detailed assessment on the platform’s accessibility, please visit the Springshare platform’s voluntary product accessibility checklist.
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. The website contains images, downloadable documents in Word/PDF formats, and video files. The PDFs are best viewed in the free Adobe Reader tool, allowing you to magnify, navigate via the bookmark bar, change colours via preferences and listen using Adobe’s inbuilt text to speech or any other 3rd party tool.
Customising the website
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. You can access this advice by visiting their website here.
How accessible is this website?
We can confirm that the Springshare’s platform follows the WCAG2.1 web accessibility guideline. However, as the site is customisable locally, we know that some parts of this website are not fully accessible.
We are currently addressing these issues by adding in appropriate alt-text into images, adapting the background colour on banners to make them darker and reviewing the use of PDFs.
What to do if you cannot access parts of the LibGuides or LibCal websites
We are always looking to improve the accessibility of the LibGuides and LibCalwebsites. If you need information on parts of the LibGuides or LibCal websites or resources in a different format like accessible PDF, large print or need subtitles for videos etc, please contact disability@sgul.ac.uk and we will endeavour to respond to you within 5 working days outside of our scheduled University closure days.
Reporting accessibility problems with this website
Reporting your experience will help us further enhance the accessibility of our LibGuides and LibCal websites.
We continue to make further improvements and enhancements to our accessibility features based on feedback from our users.
Please let us know if you encounter any problems, or if you find any of our features particularly useful. If you find any problems that are not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, contact disability@sgul.ac.uk
When contacting us, please provide:
- Page URL (web page address)
- Issue encountered (and if on mobile or desktop)
- Any particular software or assistive technology being used (for example browser, screen reader)
If you need any help in reporting your difficulty with the website, please read the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guide 'Contacting Organisations about Inaccessible Websites'.
Contacting organisations about inaccessible websites
There is additional government advice on contacting websites to report accessibility issues and what your rights are.
Reporting an accessibility problem on a public sector website
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, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) directly.
Contact details for the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS)
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
St George’s, University of London is committed to making all websites hosted at the University accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
The LibGuides website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
The full guidelines are available at:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1
Non accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
PDFs and other documents
This website has some PDF and Word documents that do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be accessible to a screen reader, have alternate text content and work well with text to speech especially when there are images. Some of them may have colour contrast issues. The following WCAG2.1 success criteria are not satisfied:
All new documents uploaded from September 2020 will be tested for its accessibility using appropriate tools provided by Microsoft and Adobe, before being uploaded to the website.
Non-text content
This website has a number of images that do not provide text alternative (WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content)). Any new images published from September 2020 will be provided with text alternatives and be tested for accessibility standards wherever possible.
Colour-contrast of images
There may not be sufficient contrast between foreground and background colours (WCAG2.1 success criterion 1.4.1(use of colour)) for some images on this website. All such images will be tested for accessibility and if there are concepts or information conveyed using colours, these will be ensured to have an alternate way for communication.
How we tested this website
The LibGuides website and its resources were manually tested for its accessibility using the following set of tools: the colour contrasts of images were checked for WCAG compliance using online filters available on the web. The last test was conducted on 06/07/2020.
The testing is an ongoing process and is followed by manual prioritisation of issues, and we are working with the relevant team to further address the issues as soon as is realistically possible.
What we are doing to improve accessibility
We are continually improving the user experience for everyone and applying the relevant accessibility standards. We will be reviewing resources and test for its accessibility compliance on a regular basis. Further support, guidance and training will be provided to all staff who are involved in creating resources for this website and also to increase awareness of accessibility and our responsibilities. For third party products where we are not in control of the content or user experience, we will continue to liaise with the provider to ensure that improvements are being made.