Accessibility statement for University of Edinburgh (EdWeb 2.0)

Website accessibility statement inline with Public Sector Body (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

This accessibility statement applies to a set of sub-domains of the ed.ac.uk

This website (which we call EdWeb 2.0) is run by the University of Edinburgh. 

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • Zoom in most content (except Library chat window) up to 500% with reflow and without loss of content
  • Using your browser settings, change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • Use the website without encountering any flashing, scrolling or moving text
  • Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of Job Access with Speech (JAWS), NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) and VoiceOver)
  • Navigate to most of the content by keyboard only
  • Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software (including Dragon NaturallySpeaking)
  • Use the website without encountering any time limits

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. 

Customising the website

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. This is an external site with suggestions to make your computer more accessible.

AbilityNet - My Computer My Way

With a few simple steps you can customise the appearance of our website using your browser settings to make it easier to read and navigate.

Additional information on how to customise our website appearance

If you are a member of University staff or a student, you can use the free SensusAccess accessible document conversion service:

Information on accessible document conversion service - SensusAccess

How accessible this website is

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

  • Some text size is small
  • Some colour contrasts could be improved
  • Spellcheck options are not offered in all browsers
  • Tabbing via keyboard is not always logical and/or consistent, and does not always meet contrast focus requirements
  • Some parts may not be fully compatible with screen readers
  • Not all media will have a transcript or have human corrected captions
  • Not all videos have audio description
  • Not all images have suitable alternative text
  • Some headings and heading levels are missed
  • Some pop-ups may appear or links may open a new tab without notice
  • Some links may be indicated by colour only or lack meaningful hypertext
  • Some older PDF documents may not be fully accessible to screen reader software

Feedback and contact information

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

Information Services online contact form

  • Email: website.support@ed.ac.uk
  • Telephone: Information Services Helpline - +44 (0)131 651 5151
  • Address: Website and Communication team, Argyle House, 3 Lady Lawson St, Edinburgh, EH3 9DR
  • British Sign Language (BSL) users can contact us via Contact Scotland BSL, the online BSL interpreting service. 

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

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are 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:

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

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)

The government has produced information on how to report accessibility issues:

Reporting an accessibility problem on a public sector website

Contacting us by phone using British Sign Language

British Sign Language service

Contact Scotland BSL 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 8.00am to 12.00am, 7 days a week.

Contact Scotland BSL service details

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The University of Edinburgh is committed to making its websites and applications 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 (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

The full guidelines are available at:

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard

Non accessible content

We are working towards solving these problems and expect several improvements by November 2025. The site is fully within our control.

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 2.2 AA success criteria:

  • Not all non-text content has a text alternative.
  • 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 captions or captions that identify all speakers as well as noting other significant sounds, e.g., laughter.
  • There are some empty headings and links
  • The way the content is presented affects its meaning, and a correct reading sequence is not programmatically determined
  • Links in the text should be clearly identifiable (color alone is not enough to distinguish links from the surrounding text).
  • There may not be sufficient colour contrast between font and background colours especially where the text size is small. For example, table captions have insufficient colour contrast between foreground and background.
  • Information is conveyed as an image of text rather than as text itself so that it's not compatible with screen readers and other assistive technology.
    • 1.4.5 - Images of text
    • This content has been significantly reduced. We are running accessibility workshops from 2023 to help address this issue further.
  • Most content can be magnified up to 500%, but the library chat left-side menu cannot be magnified without the content being cut.
  • Most tooltips disappear as soon as the cursor moves or may not be accessible by other means than mouse. Also, tooltips are not always present for all icons and images.
  • There are some occurrences of badly formatted links either with text that is not descriptive enough, e.g., click here or have the full web address , e.g., https://www. rather than formatted link text. This is rare though. We are currently working to eliminate these link issues.
  • Headings or heading levels are sometimes missed
  • It is not always clear where the user has reached via keyboard navigation.
  • Pop ups appear without the user being alerted when the user interacts with an item and some links open new tabs.
  • User errors are either not automatically detected or suggestions for correction are not given.
  • Not all content may be robust enough that it can be interpreted by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.
  • While we have a 'Skip to content' link on every page when new users access the website, they will receive our cookie consent banner at the top of the page. This can't be skipped over as it's important to get consent for cookies to comply with the General Data Protection Regulations. We do not believe this to be an accessibility issue but it does mean that the site will fail some automated accessibility tests. Once a user has chosen their level of consent, they will then be able to access the 'Skip to content' link.
  • Not all our Portable Document Files (PDF) and Word documents meet accessibility standards. From May 2020 onwards we are running a series of workshops and campaigns to highlight this issue and train users in how to audit and then improve the accessibility of these documents.

We aim to improve our websites accessibility on a regular and continuous basis. See the section below ('What we're doing to improve accessibility') on how we are improving our site accessibility. 

Disproportionate burden

We are not currently claiming that any accessibility problems would be a disproportionate burden to fix.

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

Campus maps

It is unlikely that the map application for the University is fully accessible with all assistive technologies. However, maps are currently not within the scope of the regulations.

There is a lot of additional information available in different formats including maps to download and information in the AccessAble - UoE app available for iOS and Android.

Campus maps

The following items do not comply with the WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria:

  • Not all non-text content presented to users has alternative text
  • Colour is used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element

Campus maps has its own accessibility statement with full details

PDFs and other documents

Some 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 2.2 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value). 

WCAG 2.2 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 will work to rectifying these and where possible replacing with more accessible HTML format. 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. For example, we do not plan to fix archive material such as news articles published before 2018.

Regulations for PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018

Example news archive

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We will continue to address and make adequate improvements to the accessibility issues highlighted. Unless specified otherwise, a complete solution or significant improvement will be in place by November 2025.

While we are in the process of resolving these accessibility issues, we will ensure reasonable adjustments are in place to make sure no user is disadvantaged. As changes are made, we will continue to review accessibility and retest the accessibility of this website.

  • Training is available to all staff on:
    • creating accessible content,
    • manual accessibility testing of websites and applications
    • and accessibility statement writing
  • We use a design framework which is stable and has been tested for accessibility issues. This cuts down, but doesn't totally remove, the risk of web editors adding design elements that are not accessible.
  • The      University has a published web strategy and governance approach.
  • Support, guidance and training process in place for all University staff to increase awareness of accessibility and what our responsibilities are.

Accessibility improvements

Accessibility improvements, bug fixes and development work to fix issues will be recorded to keep a record of work completed.

Please see the change log below for more detail. 

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared in January 2023. It was last reviewed on 16th May 2025.

The website was last tested in October 2024. The testing was carried out by the Disability Information Team at the University of Edinburgh using both automated and manual methods. 

The site was tested on a PC, primarily using Microsoft Edge alongside Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Some testing also completed on Apple Mac.

Recent world-wide usage levels survey for different screen readers and browsers shows that Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge are increasing in popularity and Google Chrome is now the favoured browser for screen readers:

WebAIM: Screen Reader User Survey

The aforementioned three browsers have been used in certain questions for reasons of breadth and variety.

We ran automated testing using AXE browser extension (for Google Chrome) and then manual testing that included:

  • Spell check functionality;
  • Scaling using different resolutions and reflow;
  • Options to customise the interface (magnification, font, background colour, etc);
  • Keyboard navigation and keyboard traps;
  • Data validation;
  • Warning of links opening in new tab or window;
  • Information conveyed in the colour or sound only;
  • Flashing, moving or scrolling text;
  • Use with screen reading software (for example JAWS);
  • Assistive software (TextHelp Read and Write, Windows Magnifier, ZoomText, Dragon Naturally Speaking, TalkBack and VoiceOver);
  • Tooltips and text alternatives for any non-text content;
  • Time limits;
  • Compatibility with mobile accessibility functionality (Android and iOS);
  • Any drag functionality and alternatives;
  • Consistent help function;
  • Need to re-enter data already submitted;
  • Any cognitive tests.

Our main approach to accessibility testing of the central University website is as follows:

  • We use an automated testing tool to batch process a sample of pages. This includes all the different page or content types and for small sites this will include all pages.
  • Once a year we run a significant manual test on a sample of pages including the University Website Publishing team website and a number of key pages that have a large number of website visitors.

Examples of sample pages used for manual website testing:

Change Log

2024

November

  • Improved the contrast of the ‘Skip to main content’ navigation links

April

  • Fixed an issue where some navigational elements were causing an empty button and a broken ARIA reference error.
  • Fixed the home icon which was causing an empty link error
  • Heading 1 added back into the website homepages
  • Checked accessibility feedback form working correctly and correct procedures followed 7 Feb 2024
  • Updated the footer heading font colour contrast.
  • Updated the CMS login link font colour contrast.
  • Automated testing evaluation started 17 Jan 2024

March

February

January

2023

January

  • Work to upgrade to Bootstrap 5 and our EdGEL design framework is ongoing
    • Brings in some general accessibility improvements
  • Training workshops in accessibility started again
    • How to interpret automated accessibility testing reports
    • Writing Alt text
  • Improved some visual information to identify user interface components, such as keyboard focus,
    • This does still need improved and will be addressed as part of our Design System project

2022

October 

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