Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to the website of the Coventry University Group - www.coventry.ac.uk/cuc/.

This website is owned and maintained by Coventry University Group. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. We are committed to improving our online experience for our visitors. We try and make the content as simple as possible to understand.

On most of our web pages you should be able to:

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• zoom in without text disappearing off the screen
• navigate around the pages using a keyboard
• navigate using speech recognition software
• listen to the content using a screen reader

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

We use Siteimprove to monitor the accessibility of our website.

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible

Some parts of this website are not fully accessible, for example:

• Some information is only available in linked files such as Word documents or PDF
• Some older documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• On older web pages, you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
• Some videos and audio do not have captions or transcriptions available
• Live video streams do not have captions
• Text on some carousel elements is clipped when resized up to 200%

Requesting alternative formats

If you need information in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio or braille you can request an alternative format.

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

Providing feedback and reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re committed to improving the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, you can report an accessibility issue.

Enforcement procedure

If, after contacting us, you feel your issue hasn’t been sufficiently addressed, you can raise a concern or make a complaint by completing our complaint form.

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

Coventry University Group 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.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Issues with text

•  Some pages have a structure that doesn’t follow a logical order (WCAG 2.4.6 Headings and Labels).
• Some pages contain text which is not written in the simplest way to understand (WCAG 3.1.2 Language of Parts).

We will correct this as we review each page and as part of a review of our templates.

Issues with audio and video

• Some videos do not have captions (WCAG 1.2.2 Captions (Pre-recorded)).
• Some videos use automatically generate captions, which may be inaccurate (WCAG 1.2.2 Captions (Pre-recorded)).
• Some audio content does not have a transcript or other text equivalent (WCAG 1.2.5 Audio Description (Pre-recorded)).

We will correct this as part of our review of audio and video content.

Issues with linked files such as PDFs

• Some information is only available in formats such as PDF or Microsoft Word. Not all PDFs have been designed for accessibility. They may contain content that should be available in an accessible format such as HTML (WCAG 1.3 Adaptable)

We will correct this or provide accessible alternatives as we review each page of our site. We will make content creators aware of the problems with PDF files.

Issues with keyboard navigation

• On some pages there’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (WCAG 2.1.1).

We will correct this as we review each page and as part of a review of our templates and site functionality.

Disproportionate burden

We are not claiming disproportionate burden.

We are currently undertaking a major review of the site. As part of this we are assessing the accessibility of our content and fixing issues as we find them.

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

PDFs and other documents

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.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

How we are testing this website

We use a mix of automated and manual testing of a representative sample of the site against the WCAG 2.1 AA standard.

• We use Siteimprove to scan a representative sample of our pages for accessibility.
• We also manually check pages using an accessibility checklist and use tools such as WebAIM for colour contrast checks.
• We are currently in the process of conducting an external review to identify additional areas for improvement.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

There are currently over 7,000 pages on this website. Making the website fully accessible will take time.

We are making content creators and subject matter experts aware of accessibility issues. This will increase knowledge of accessibility across the organisation with the aim to improve accessible content from initiation through to publishing.

We are including accessibility as a fundamental part of all future web page and websites we create. This includes moving to new web content templates and developing functionality to meet web accessibility standards.

We are currently auditing our website and templates and will make required changes as soon as possible.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was first prepared on 2 January 2019. It was last reviewed on 7 June 2022.