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The University of Manchester Library

Web accessibility statement

This statement applies to content published on:

Medium.com blogs

Other websites that also belong to The University of Manchester and use manchester.ac.uk sub-domains are managed locally and will publish separate statements with information relevant to them. These include websites of our academic Schools and research institutes, among others.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use our website and we are continually working towards improving its accessibility. We follow general principles of usability and universal design, and endeavour to meet level 2 (AA) of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.

These websites will allow you to:

  • zoom in up to 200% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard or speech recognition tools
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader
  • view essential audio-visual information (captions or transcriptions are provided in most cases)

How accessible these websites are

We know some parts of these websites are not fully accessible.

Please see the Technical Information section below for more detailed information on known accessibility issues.

Making changes to your device

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

Also, the University’s Disability Advisory and Support Service (DASS) website offers up-to-date information for prospective students and staff with specific learning difficulties, disabilities, sensory impairments, mental health difficulties and medical conditions.

Reporting accessibility problems with these websites

Please contact us via the ‘Library Help’ pages if you require information on these websites in a different format, have an accessibility query (including about content not within the scope of the accessibility regulation), identify any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements:

Please provide the web address (URL) of the page(s) in which you find the problem, a description of the issue and your name. We will consider your request and get back to you within ten working days.

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 a complaint about accessibility please let us know. If you remain unsatisfied, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about the accessibility of these websites

We are committed to making our websites accessible, in accordance with the accessibility regulations. These websites are partially compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AA standard, due to the instances of non-compliance and exceptions listed below.

Conforming alternative versions of these websites

Medium.com has some web accessibility issues and pages do not conform to WCAG 2.1 AA. These issues are at the site structure level (primarily navigation and heading elements) and are not within The University of Manchester Library’s direct control.

Therefore we provide conforming alternate versions for all Library content hosted on Medium.com. This conforming alternate version has been tested found to meet and exceed WCAG 2.1 AA.

To access Library Medium content, simply add https://mirrium.glitch.me/ before the full link. For example:

becomes:

The tool will reformat embedded Medium links, so it will not generally be necessary to change links found within a resource.

Some of our Medium posts use embedded media such as images, audio and video, in some cases hosted on third-party platforms. Where we do this, we provide a text transcript or equivalent. This will be clearly linked from the post where the content is embedded, generally in the caption below the embed; or within the text of the post itself.

Please contact us if you require further support:

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

  • Some headings (including table headings) have been formatted or sequenced in a way which could present issues for some users. Properly ordered headings that do not skip levels convey the semantic structure of the page, making it easier to navigate and understand when using assistive technologies. (WCAG: 1.3.1)
  • On some pages, the underlying code contains mark-up errors and duplications in element tags. This could cause assistive technology to be unable to generate a satisfactory model of the page and therefore cause issues for some users. (WCAG: 4.1.1)
  • It is not currently possible to bypass blocks of content that are repeated on multiple web pages. This can present issues for people with some disabilities as they attempt to reach the main content of the web page(s) quickly and easily. (WCAG: 2.4.1)
  • Some links are not labelled in a way that makes their purpose clear for all users. (WCAG: 2.4.4)
  • We are aware that some images on our Special Collections blog may not currently have alternative text, but we are actively working to add alternative text to all images to improve accessibility for visually impaired users. (WCAG: 1.1.1)

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

PDFs and other documents

Some non-essential PDF documents that were published before 23 September 2018 may not be fully accessible. All subsequent PDF documents will comply with accessibility regulations.

Third party-content

Our site uses, and / or links to third-party content which the University does not design or control and therefore accessibility standards may vary.

These websites are published on the ‘Medium.com’ platform. Medium can be contact via their support pages:

How we tested these websites

This statement was prepared on 16 November 2020. It was last reviewed on 16 November 2020.

This website was last tested on 13 November 2020. The test was carried out by The University of Manchester Library. The scan report highlights any content that is not compliant with WCAG 2.1.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We have an ongoing programme of work to address any accessibility issues that are highlighted by our weekly scans. We are continually working on our content and site structure and finding ways to make the site more intuitive and easier to navigate. We are developing guidelines on how to create accessible content to help those colleagues working on our websites.