Our services: Accessibility and Support: Accessibility Statement

This page details the accessibility of the Durham University Library and Collections website and how we aim to improve it.

This website is run by the University of Durham. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. 

On most pages on our website you should be able to:

• Change some colours and fonts
• Zoom in up to 500% without the text spilling off the screen
• Navigate using just a keyboard
• Navigate using speech recognition software
• Listen to content using a screen reader. 

AbilityNet’s My Computer My Way pages have advice on adjustments you can make to your computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone to make it easier to use.

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible 

• Some information is only available in PDF format, and hasn’t been designed for accessibility.
• Some videos do not have captions.
• Some parts of the website link to other websites, such as publisher platforms.

Alternative formats

Staff and students can request alternative formats of our web content. Please contact us to make a request.

Reporting accessibility problems

If you find any problems not listed on this page, or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, you can contact us to report an accessibility issue.

Detailed information about this website's accessibility 

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, because of the issues below.

Text:

• Some pages have incorrect heading structures.
• Some links do not make sense when read out of context, using text such as ‘click here’.
• Some pages contain text which is not as simple as possible to understand.

Images:

• Some images which need a description do not have any alternative (alt) text, or have blank alt text.
• Some decorative images have alt text which should be blank.

PDFs and other documents:

• Some information is only available in formats such as PDF.
• Not all PDFs have been designed for accessibility.

Tables:

• Some pages contain tables which do not have headers.
• Some pages use tables for layout purposes.

Audio and video:

• Some videos do not have captions.
• Some videos use automatically generated captions, which may be inaccurate.
• Some video content does not have a transcript or other text equivalent.

Keyboard navigation:

• Some elements which reveal hidden content - such as tabbed content - may be difficult to use, particularly when used with a screen reader.

Interactive tools:

• Some of our pages contain content from systems provided by external suppliers.

How we tested this website

We tested our website throughout 2020. Library and Collections staff manually checked a representative sample of pages from across our website. This included checking that our pages can be navigated using only a keyboard, and testing colour and font adjustments.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

A website working group has been formed, with representation from services from around the University. The group has attended training in web accessibility and is working to make digital content easier for everyone to use. 

We are launching a new website in 2021. Trained web editors are using ready-made templates that have been built with accessibility in mind. 

We will consider accessibility standards when making new system procurements.

We are ensuring that our development processes include accessibility considerations as standard. 

This statement was last updated on 22 September 2020.