Web accessibility statement

How accessible this website is

We are currently redeveloping the York St John University website to improve accessibility and usability.

During the website redevelopment, we know some parts of the website won't be fully accessible:

• Most of our older PDF documents aren't full accessible to screen reader software
• Some images may be missing alternative text
• Some of our pages don't have the correct heading structure
• Some of our older page layouts may have inaccessible navigation elements

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

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

• email website@yorksj.ac.uk
• call 01904 624624

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.

If you can’t view the map in the footer, call or email us for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re 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: website@yorksj.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

York St John University 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 version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Issues with technology

There are a number of technical accessibility issues with our website that are being addressed as part of our website redevelopment project. As we are taking an agile approach to the development of our new website, these issues will be identified and fixed through continuous updates.

Issues with text

Some link text doesn’t make sense when read on its own (for example, ‘click here’).

We plan to fix the existing links by September 2020. When we publish new content we’ll make sure link text meets accessibility standards.

Issues with PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be marked up so they’re accessible to a screen reader.

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. By September 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we don’t plan to fix historical documents relating to policies, reports or minutes.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Issues with images, video and audio

Some of the images on our website may not have alternative text. We will ensure that all of our images have appropriate alternative text by 31 December 2019.

All of the videos on our website are hosted on YouTube. Some of these videos may not be correctly captioned. We will make sure that all videos are correctly captioned by September 2020.

Issues with interactive tools and transactions

The colour contrast on our cookie notice banner is too low. We also have some issues with colour contrast on our old page layouts that will be fixed as part of our wider website redevelopment.

We are aware of accessibility issues with a number of our third party tools and systems, including:

• Our jobs website
• Our research repository
• The Accommodation Hub
• The Online Store

We are working with these third party suppliers to identify and correct accessibility issues as soon as possible.

If you are unable to use any of these systems 

How we test this website

Our website is tested weekly using an automated accessibility tool provided by Siteimprove. This tool tests our whole website and provides a report on accessibility issues.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are committed to improving accessibility across our websites, apps and other digital platforms. An accessibility working group has been established by the University to ensure a continuous improvement of accessibility of digital content. In addition, we are:

• Running additional training sessions with website editors
• Establishing a new website publishing model to check the accessibility of content before it is published to the live website
• Establishing owners of content to ensure timely removal of inaccessible content
• Working with third party suppliers to improve the accessibility of other digital platforms