Accommodation Services

Web Accessibility Statement for https://onlineapps.accom.gla.ac.uk

Using this website

This website is run by the Accommodation Services Department (part of Commercial Services) and is maintained by Information Services Business Systems at The University of Glasgow. The website is developed and supplied by a third-party supplier - Kinetic Software and ‘skinned’ to look like a University website.

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
• view on a wide range of screen sizes due to its responsive design
• 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 have also made the website text and language used as simple as possible to understand.

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:

• Some images do not have alternative text
• you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
• PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
• you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
• you cannot magnify the residence maps using a keyboard
• some elements have insufficient colour contrast

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

Web: https://www.gla.ac.uk/accommodation

Email: accom@glasgow.ac.uk

Call: 0141 330 4743

We will consider your request and get back to you in 10 days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, contact: Brian Eden – brian.eden@glasgow.ac.uk].

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you’re 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 University of Glasgow is committed to making its website 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, due to the non-compliances listed below:

Non-accessible content

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

Issues with page refresh on all pages

All pages are set to automatically refresh using a <meta> tag. This control is being used to log users out of the system after a period of inactivity for security reasons.

We are assessing alternative solutions so we can remove this non-accessible element.

Issues with content not landmarked

Not all page content is contained within landmark regions and you cannot skip to the main region of each page.

We shall be working with our 3^rd party supplier Kinetic Software to fix this issue.

Issue with NoScript Elements

The website uses JavaScript to properly function and there is no non-scripted accessible version of the content available.

Issues with PDFs and other documents

• Our older PDFs do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be marked up so they’re accessible to a screen reader.
• Some of our PDFs are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users use the online application system. By December 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.
• Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Issues with images, video and audio

• Some images in the application pages do not have alternative text.
• Some induction videos do not have captions. As they were published before 23 September 2020, they are exempt from accessibility regulations at this time, but we shall endeavour to work with our 3^rd party supplier - Campuslife to address the captions issue.
• We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Issues with interactive tools and transactions

• Some text elements do not have a sufficient colour contrast ratio e.g. in the progress bar and preference page within the student accommodation application screens and error messages.
  We shall be working with our 3^rd party supplier Kinetic Software to fix this issue. When we publish new content, we will make sure text contrast meets accessibility standards.
• Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ or fieldset tag. E.g. Arrival Slot page

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Residence images on the accommodation preferences page do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

As our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website we shall be working with the supplier Kinetic Software to rectify this issue.

Where possible, we plan to add text alternatives for all images by December 2020. When we publish new content, we will make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Navigation and accessing information

There is no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option).
It is not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping.

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.

We shall be working with our 3^rd party supplier Kinetic Software to fix this issue.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

We are conducting an audit of all the websites used within the Accommodation Services Department and will tackle accessibility issues on a priority basis.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 10^th September 2020. It was last updated on 21^st September 2020.

This website was last tested in September 2020. The test was carried out University of Glasgow staff.

The test was carried out by running some of our own reports using WebAims WAVE accessibility evaluation tool and the Lighthouse Accessibility extension of Google Chrome.

We sampled the most used pages when considering which pages to test for accessibility.