Accessibility Statement

The School of Geography and the Environment (SoGE) at the University of Oxford, is committed to providing an accessible web presence that gives members of the public and members of the University community full access to our information, courses and activities offered publicly through the web.

This accessibility statement applies to the SoGE website: www.geog.ox.ac.uk

The School of Geography and the Environment's web estate consists of several related sub-sites with the ouce.ox.ac.uk domain. Accessibility statements for such sub-sites will be found locally on each website.

How accessible is this website?

In order to ensure that all of our visitors can use our website, these webpages aim to meet Level-AA standard of WCAG 2.1.

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

  • Most older documents (e.g. Office files and PDFs) aren't fully accessible to screen reader software
  • live video streams do not have captions

We are working to address areas where our accessibility needs improvement. Please see 'Technical information' and our known issues listed under 'Non-accessible content' below for more details.

Making changes to your device or system

AbilityNet has advice on making your devices easier to use if you have a disability. In addition, major operating systems produce the following guidance:

Information in alternative formats

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille please contact the webmaster at webmaster@geog.ox.ac.uk.

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 webpage or think we're not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact the webmaster at webmaster@geog.ox.ac.uk.

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).

Other accessibility resources

If you'd like more information about accessibility and resources for students, staff and visitors in Oxford more generally, please visit the University's Equality and Diversity webpages.

If you're looking for information on building accessibility, please try the University's Access Guide or the University's interactive map.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

The Transport Studies Unit at the University of Oxford is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. As part of this commitment, we are required to publish known issues with our website.

The SoGE website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the known issues listed under 'Non-accessible content' below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

 

Issues with documents (including Office files and PDFs)

  • Many of our older documents (e.g. Word files, PowerPoints, PDFs) don't meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be marked up so that they're accessible to a screen reader (WCAG 2.1 4.1.2).

    No official or authoritative information should be solely provided in these documents and alternative formats for documents provided on this website are available on request. The accessibility regulations don't require us to fix documents published before 23 September 2018 if they're not essential to providing our services, however we are working towards either making these documents accessible or replacing them with accessible webpages. Any new documents we publish will aim to meet accessibility standards.

Issues with video and audio

  • Not all pre-recorded audio or video has an audio description or transcript (WCAG 2.1 1.2)

    Older pre-recorded audio or video media embedded on our website (e.g. our podcasts or videos from past events) may not have captions or a text alternative such as a transcript. We are working on adding captions, descriptions and/or transcripts to all embedded audio and video as required. Any new audio or video media we embed will aim to meet accessibility standards.

Issues with forms

  • Form labels may not be correctly associated with form controls and some fieldsets may be missing legends (WCAG 2.1 2.4.)

    We are aware of issues with some of the forms on the website and are working on a fix.

  • Form elements may not be correctly grouped (WCAG 2.1 1.3.1 3.3.2)

    We're aware of this issue on some of the forms on the website and are working on a fix.

Issues with text, including hyperlinks, descriptions, labels, web pages

  • Some link text doesn't make sense when read on its own (for example, 'read more') (WCAG 2.1 2.4.4 and 2.4.9)

    We use a quality assurance tool that helps us to check for poor link text, and will use this and manual checks to improve and maintain the quality of link text as we update the website in the future.

  • HTML is used to format some content on our website (WCAG 2.1 1.3.1)

    Although we have worked to reduce this across the website, there may still be some instances where HTML is used to format some content. We are using a quality assurance tool that helps us to check for these instances, and will use this and manual checks to improve and maintain the quality of content across the site as we update the website in the future.

  • Low contrast between foreground and background colours (WCAG 2.1 1.4.3)

    Although we have worked to reduce this across the website, there may still be some colour contrast issues on some webpages. We are working on fixing these issues.

Issues with navigation and operability

  • Some non-tabular information may be presented in a layout table (WCAG 2.1 1.3.1 1.3.2)

    Some information currently presented as a table (e.g. staff listings on the the people page), would be better presented with other HTML elements and styled with CSS to achieve the desired visual presentation. We are working on a fix.

 

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

Third party content

Our website may include third party content and functionality. This may direct you to a related service, link to another website or supporting documentation. We are not responsible for the accessibility of third party content or to other websites we link to.

Where we are legally required to feature third party content or functionality, we cannot reasonably accept responsibility for ensuring it meets accessibility standards. However, where it is within our control, we will make every reasonable effort to work towards meeting accessibility requirements.

Third party platforms

We may create content which is hosted on third party platforms. This includes:

  • content we create for social media
  • video which we host
  • content or data we supply to others

We are responsible for ensuring the content we supply meets accessibility requirements; however, we are not responsible for the accessibility of the third-party platform itself.

Live video

Live video streams are used minimally on our website and do not have captions (WCAG 2.1 1.2.4).

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

Archived / historical content (webpages and documents) not used for active administration purposes

This website has a number of older webpages (e.g. completed research project webpages) and documents (e.g. Word documents and PDFs) which were published before September 2018 that are not essential to the services we provide or used for active administration purposes.

We are not planning on replacing these documents with accessible versions until the website undergoes a substantial redevelopment. If you experience any difficulties accessing older content, please contact the webmaster at webmaster@geog.ox.ac.uk.

How we tested this website

The SoGE website was last tested during August 2022. An audit was carried out internally, using automated testing tools together with a manual check of a substantial and carefully chosen sample of webpages and content types.

A new version of the SoGE website was launched in November 2023 - an audit of the new website will be carried out as soon as possible.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We want our website to offer the best experience possible for all of our users. In addition to our plan to fix known issues, we continue to work on improving the website content and structure. We are working with our content providers to ensure that future content and versions of this website are accessible.

We will continue to review the website on a regular basis, perform an annual audit, and check all new content.

This statement was prepared on 21 August 2022. It was last updated on 21 November 2023.