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Our Accessibility Statement

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

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible as described in the Non-accessible content section. We plan to fix these as soon as possible, and have given dates for when we’ll be able to do this by.

Feedback and contact information

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

  • Email smsu@stmarys.ac.uk
  • Call 0208 240 2377
  • DM us on Instagram @stmaryssu

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in a maximum of 2 days. If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact’ page, 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 not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact joe.garvey@stmarys.ac.uk with a description of the problem and screenshots and we’ll aim to fix them as soon as possible.

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).

Contacting us by visiting us in person

If you’d rather contact us in person, you can find us in office K11.


Technical information about this website’s accessibility

St Mary’s Students’ Union 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 not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. The non-compliances and exemptions are listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

There is no skip to content functionality across the website. This fails WCAG 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks (A). This issue is only fixable by our web platform, OneVoice, and we’re in talks with them to solve this issue as soon as possible. We are currently working out a solution for this and aim to have it in place by the end of February 2020.


If a user is moving through the sub menus on section pages the collapsible dropdown menus are not correctly identified to screen reader users. The do still function correctly and can be navigated with the space and arrow keys. This issue is out of SMSU’s control and has been referred to our 3rd party supplier (oneVoice). We are awaiting confirmation from them when the issue can be fixed. We expect to receive confirmation of dates from them by the end of February 2020. One we have that information we will update this accessibility statement.


Across the website there are some images that do not have appropriate alt text to be descriptive for screen reader users. Images such as the carousel image links on the home page and news article links are not descriptive enough. This fails WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content (A), 1.4.5 Images of Text (AA) and 2.4.4 Link Purpose (A). This issue is out of SMSU’s control and has been referred to our 3rd party supplier (oneVoice). We are awaiting confirmation from them when the issue can be fixed. We expect to receive confirmation of dates from them by the end of February 2020. One we have that information we will update this accessibility statement.



Many of the news articles are linked to multiple times through the article picture, title and date. These are all read differently but all lead to the same location which can be confusing for some users. This fails WCAG 2.4.4 Link Purpose (A), 3.2.4 Consistent Identification (AA) and 4.1.1 Parsing (A). This issue is out of SMSU’s control and has been referred to our 3rd party supplier (oneVoice). We are awaiting confirmation from them when the issue can be fixed. We expect to receive confirmation of dates from them by 30-Nov-2020. One we have that information we will update this accessibility statement.

The filter news articles button is just read out to screen reader users as button. This is not descriptive of the purpose. This fails WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (A). This issue is out of SMSU’s control and has been referred to our 3rd party supplier (oneVoice). We are awaiting confirmation from them when the issue can be fixed. We expect to receive confirmation of dates from them by the end of February 2020. One we have that information we will update this accessibility statement.



The heading structure for the news articles page can be confusing as dates are listed alongside article headings as h2. This fails 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A). This issue is out of SMSU’s control and has been referred to our 3rd party supplier (oneVoice). We are awaiting confirmation from them when the issue can be fixed. We expect to receive confirmation of dates from them by the end of February 2020. One we have that information we will update this accessibility statement.
 

Disproportionate burden

At this time, we have made no claims of disproportionate burden.

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

Portable Document Format (PDF) and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. By September 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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 historical council meeting minute documents published before 23rd September 2018.

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

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are currently auditing this website to identify any non-accessible content. We're working with our web provider, OneVoice, to assign dates to each of the action points above that needs work. We are awaiting confirmation from them when the issues listed above can be fixed. We expect to receive confirmation of dates from them by 30-Nov-2020. One we have that information we will update this accessibility statement.

This includes ensuring all link text has a clear purpose, headings are correctly nested, images have alternative text, colour contrast is sufficient and that all content can be read by a screen reader.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 10th September 2020. It was last reviewed on the same date.

This website was last tested on 27/08/2020. The test was carried out by All Able Ltd.

All pages of the website were tested along with a sample of the documents from each area of the website.