Accessibility known issues

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

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations on www.ox.ac.uk

Issues with navigation and operability

Form elements are not grouped (WCAG 2.2 1.3.1 3.3.2)

We’re aware of this issue on our fees and funding pages, where content comes from another source. We’re working with our developers on a fix.

Issues with text, including hyperlinks, descriptions, labels, web pages

Links:

  • Some link text doesn’t make sense when read on its own (for example, ‘click here’) (WCAG 2.2 2.4.4 and 2.4.9)
  • Some link text is used for multiple different destinations (WCAG 2.2 2.4.4)
  • Alternative text for image is identical to link text (WCAG 2.2 1.1.1)

We continue to work with our website editors to provide them with training and guidance on best practices. We use a quality assurance tool that helps us to check for poor link text, and will use this and manual checks to improve and maintain the quality of link text across the site.

Heading is missing text (WCAG 2.2 1.3.1)

We continue to work with our website editors to provide them with training and guidance on best practices. We use a quality assurance tool that helps us to check for these instances, and will use this and manual checks to improve and maintain the quality of content across the site.

Some tables do not have clearly defined headers (WCAG 2.2 1.3.1)

We’re aware of this issue on our fees and funding pages, where content comes from another source. We’re working with our developers on a fix.

HTML is used to format some content on our site (WCAG 2.2 1.3.1)

We continue to work with our website editors to provide them with training and guidance on best practices. We use a quality assurance tool that helps us to check for these instances, and will use this and manual checks to improve and maintain the quality of content across the site.

Link text is not always identified in ways other than colour (WCAG 2.2 1.4.1)

We are working with our developers to consider link style options that will provide greater clarity and will implement changes in the coming months.

Some HTML is not valid (WCAG 2.2 4.1.1)

We are working with our developers to ensure that these are implemented correctly on our site.

Issues with images, video and audio

Not all video has captions, text or audio description (WCAG 2.2 1.2)

Where video has audio, we use captioning. However, where video is audio free, we may not always provide an alternative. We are working to develop audio or textual alternatives to these instances on our sites and to label them where appropriate.

Not all audio has captions or text description (WCAG 2.2 1.2)

When we use embedded audio on our site, we may not always provide an alternative. We will work to develop transcripts or textual other alternatives to these instances on our sites.

Not all images are free of text (WCAG 2.2 1.4.5)

We continue to work with our website editors to provide them with training and guidance on best practices. We use a quality assurance tool that helps us to check these instances, and will use this and manual checks to improve and maintain the quality of images across the site.

Issues with documents, including Word files, PowerPoints, PDFs

Many of our older documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be marked up so that they’re accessible to a screen reader. Some newer documents cannot yet meet requirements (WCAG 2.2 4.1.2)

We are working to ensure that new documents we publish meet accessibility standards, and we are providing training to website editors to ensure that they are aware of best practice. We are working to replace or find alternatives for documents that aren’t accessible, including Course Information Sheets. The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Third party content

Our site includes third party content and functionality. This may direct you to a related service, link to another site or supporting documentation. We are not responsible for the accessibility of third party content or to other sites we link to.

Where we are legally required to feature third party content or functionality, we cannot reasonably accept responsibility for ensuring it meets accessibility standards. However, where it is within our control, we will make every reasonable effort to work towards meeting accessibility requirements.

Third party platforms

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

  • content we create for social media
  • video which we host on YouTube, SoundCloud 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.

Live video

Live video streams are used minimally on our site and do not have captions (WCAG 2.2 1.2.4). However, we do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.