Accessibility statement for blogs.ed.ac.uk

Our accessibility statement covering the use of blogs.ed.ac.uk, inline with Public Sector Body (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This blogging service (blogs.ed.ac.uk) is run by the University of Edinburgh. Blogs.ed.ac.uk is a centrally supported blogging service at the University of Edinburgh.  It is based on the open-source software application, WordPress (v5.2.3).   We want as many people as possible to be able to use this service. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 200% 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)
  • The system will not time you out other than after periods of long inactivity

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand and encourage staff and students to do the same with the content of their blog posts.  We provide guidance on the service webpages on how to write good and accessible posts.

The core platform’s functionality can be extended by the installation of existing plugins or the creation of new plugins. You can change how individual blog sites look by installing existing themes or creating new ones.  On the blogs.ed platform, we’ve made a restricted selection of plugins and themes available for users to use.

Customising the service

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

AbilityNet - My computer my way

 

How accessible this service is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • some parts may not be fully compatible with screen readers
  • it is not possible to access all content by using the keyboard alone
  • not all media will have a transcript or be subtitled
  • some text may not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window and at certain levels of magnification
  • some older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • The colour contrasts of all themes won’t always meet the recommended WCAG 2.1 AA standards
  • Tooltips are not present in all situations
  • There is some use of italics and continuous capitals
  • Spellchecker tools are not available in all areas

What to do if you cannot access parts of this service

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, audio recording or braille please contact the Information Services Helpline on 0131 651 5151, email the IS.Helpline@ed.ac.uk or use their online contact form.

Information Services online contact form

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this service

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements please let us know: 

Report an accessibility problem

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’re 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)

Contacting us by phone using British Sign Language

British Sign Language service

British Sign Language Scotland runs a service for British Sign Language users and all of Scotland’s public bodies using video relay. This enables sign language users to contact public bodies and vice versa. The service operates from 8am to 12 midnight, 7 days a week. 

British Sign Language Scotland service details

Technical information about this service's accessibility

The University of Edinburgh is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This 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.

Noncompliance with the accessibility regulations

The following items to not comply with the WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria:

  • It is not possible to use a keyboard to access all the content

  • Information may be conveyed as an image of text rather than as text itself so that it's not compatible with screen readers and other assistive technology. It can also sometimes we hard to tell where you have tabbed to.
  • There may not be sufficient colour contrast between font and background colours especially where the text size is very small.
  • Visual information to identify user interface components, such as keyboard focus, do not always have a sufficient contrast ratio
  • Not all prerecorded audio-only or video-only media will have alternative media that presents equivalent information e.g. audio track with description of the action in a video with no sound
  • Not all video will have subtitles or subtitles that identify all speakers as well as noting other significant sounds e.g. laughter
  • Not all our PDF’s and Word documents meet accessibility standards
  • Some content cannot be presented without loss of information when magnified to the maximum browser level
  • It might not be possible for all form fields to be programmatically determined. This means that when using auto-fill functionality for forms not all fields will identify the meaning for input data accurately
  • Some content cannot be presented without loss of information if the line height, paragraph spacing, letter spacing or word spacing is increased.

Unless specified otherwise a complete solution or significant improvement will be in place by September 2021 for those issues we have control over. For any that are in Core WordPress or any of the themes/plugins we use, we will report the issues to the developers by September 2020.

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value)

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. We have commissioned an audit service to assess the accessibility of our PDFs and plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages by September 2020. We will also try to ensure any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards and where we find any that are not accessible we will rectify this as soon as possible. 

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.

Regulations for PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018

We have help and support documentation for the service which we are running accessibility tests on just now and will aim to replace any we find which are not accessible by July 2020.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested in July 2021 by manual testing. We tested the system on a PC using the bowser Firefox and Chrome as these browsers are most commonly used by disabled users due to its accessibility features and compatibility with assistive technology as shown by the Digital A11y Survey

We tested:

  • Spellcheck functionality
  • Data validation
  • Scaling using different resolutions 
  • Options to customise the interface (magnification, font and background colour changing etc)
  • Keyboard navigation
  • Warning of links opening in a new tab or window
  • Information conveyed in colour or sound only
  • Flashing or scrolling text
  • Operability if Javascript is disabled
  • Use with screenreading software (JAWS)
  • TextHelp Read and Write (assistive software)
  • Zoomtext (assistive software)
  • Time limits

In July 2020 we tested the accessibility of new functionality we were adding to the service which alerts a designated course instructor when a student with a blog associated with their course publishes a new post or replies to a comment from the instructor. We tested all aspects of this new functionality for accessibility including the email that is sent to alert course organisers that a student has posted a new blog. As a result of this we made several changes to remove italics and change colour contrast to improve accessibility.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We will continue to develop our blogs.ed.ac.uk service to address the accessibility issues highlighted and deliver a solution or suitable work around. 

We have developed guidance materials for users of our service that cover how to create accessible blogs/blog posts:

  • We will work through all service documentation to ensure it is accessible by September 2020
  • We have installed a plugin to help with accessibility (WP Accessibility) which adds some accessibility features to WordPress.  We are writing best-practice guidance on how to use these extra features well.
  • We’ve switched off the inaccessible Gutenberg editor and replaced it with the Classic editor. We’ll review this decision regularly.
  • The WordPress Accessibility team publish accessible theme recommendations, many of the themes we’ve chosen to make available to users have been in the recommended list.
  • As changes are made we will continue to review accessibility and retest the accessibility of the blogging service.

 

Document Information

This statement was first published on 21st Feb 2020.  It will be reviewed at least once per year (during the summer months). A record of each review will be kept here in the ‘Comments’ column of the table.

Description Date Owner Any commnents
Documentation Creation 21st Feb 2020 Karen Howie (with input from Viki Galt)  
Document Update 9th July 2020 Karen Beggs (with input from Viki Galt)  
Document Review 15th July 2021 James Slack (with input from Viki Galt)  
Document Update 1st July 2022 James Slack  
Next Review July 2023    

 

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