Accessibility statement for Myplace

This website is run by University of Strathclyde. 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
  • 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’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. 

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible: 

  • Navigation of some class sites that use a collapsible format may be problematic using only keyboard due to lack of keyboard controls to show / hide content.
  • The navigation menu can be problematic to use using only a keyboard due to nested sub-menus.
  • Some of the forms and search functions on our website are not labelled appropriately.
  • Some pages on our website may include other pages and that may not be responsive.
  • Some images have missing or inappropriate alt text.
  • The colour contrast on some block level links is not sufficient.
  • Our link text does not always make sense when removed from the context of the page e.g. “Read more”
  • Headings do not appear in a logical order on some pages.
  • Some of our PDFs and Word documents are not correctly structured.

Feedback & contact information

If you find any problems not listed on this page, or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact help@strath.ac.uk with details of the issue you have encountered.

If you need information on this website in a different format, like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email help@strath.ac.uk. 

The relevant University team will consider the issue and get back to you in five 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, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

University of Strathclyde is committed to making classes.myplace.strath.ac.uk 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. 

Non-accessible content 

We know that some parts of the website aren't fully accessible: 

Issues with content 

  • The navigational drop-down menus in the website header are not accessible using only a keyboard. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1.
  • The navigational drop-down menus in the website header are not consistent between the website’s current and legacy page designs. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.2.3.
  • When navigating by keyboard focus links are not always clearly or explicitly highlighted. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.7. 
  • Some of our buttons, navigational blocks and text are not of a sufficient colour contrast. They do not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 and 1.4.11.
  • Headings on some of our pages do not appear in a logical order. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.10.
  • All hyperlinks within paragraph text currently use colour as the only distinguishing feature to differentiate it from other text. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.1.
  • Some of our links do not make sense or are unhelpful when removed from the context of surrounding content. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4.

Issues with images, video and audio 

  • Some of the alt tags for our images are missing or not appropriate. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1.
  • Some of the pages using the legacy design include images with embedded text. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.5.

Issues with interactive tools and transactions 

  • Some of the forms and interactive search pages on our website are not appropriately labelled or do not have labels. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.3.2.
  • Some of our interactive elements such as tabs and accordions are not functional using a keyboard and/or do not use appropriate mark-up to identify relationships. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1 and 4.1.2. 
  • Our search pages and interactive elements do not utilise status messages to update screen readers of a change in state. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.2.2.

PDFs and other documents 

  • Many PDFs and Word Documents are created by the teaching staff for classes, and may not be accessible. We are working with content producers to ensure that they produce accessible content.
  • Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2. 
  • Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can apply for courses, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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

  • 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.
  • Live video streams don’t have captions. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions - live). We don’t plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.
  • Myplace is archived annually and previous years are accessible for reference only. These instances are constituted as an archive and are outside the scope of the accessibility regulations.
  • Myplace may present content from external 3rd parties, and this content is outside the scope of the accessibility regulations.

How we test our website

The underlying Moodle platform is regularly reviewed by the Moodle Accessibility Collaboration Group, and accessibility standards are defined. Further Information on this is available via the Moodle Community wiki's Accessibility page.

An accessibility audit was conducted on our website by Jim Byrne Accessible Web Design in July 2019. This consisted of a manual audit using a browser and various assistive technologies on a sample set of pages that were broadly representative of the website as a whole. This included the website homepage, interactive functionality and search pages, and legacy page designs. 

Our website is crawled regularly using the search software Funnelback. This provides us with accessibility reports against WCAG 2.0. Developments to the Funnelback software should allow us to report to WCAG 2.1 during 2020. 

When we design and develop new features for our website we test against a number of checkpoints that help us conform to WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards, and use these as part of our standard testing procedure. 

What we’re doing to make our website more accessible

We will be continually reviewing the accessibility of our website using automated tools and manual testing procedures where necessary. We will be updating this statement to reflect our progress on rectifying the issues discovered and will provide an outline of any forthcoming resolutions where possible. 

As the significant proportion of content made available via our website is user-created, staff development training on creation of accessible content is promoted, and accessible design is emphasised by the support and administrative team that deliver the service.

We regularly update the underlying platform (Moodle) to ensure the latest accessibility updates are incorporated.

This statement was prepared on 23rd September 2019. It was last updated on 22nd October 2019.