We want everyone who visits the Unihub website to feel welcome and find the experience rewarding, going above and beyond the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018.
We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. You should be able to:
We also try to make the content as simple as possible to understand, with plain English and clear language.
To help us make the Unihub website a positive place for everyone, we've been using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities, and user friendly for everyone.
The guidelines have three levels of accessibility (A, AA and AAA). We’ve chosen Level AA as the target for the Unihub website.
We are working hard to achieve our goal of Level AA accessibility, but we realise there are some areas that still need improving. The following information explains where we are falling short, and what we are doing to improve.
We intend to go through all images flagged as missing an alt text and provide an appropriate alt text for each.
Where text has been used in an image, we are making sure to add alt texts that match the content so no meaning is lost. We will give training to content creators so they know to use this method as little as possible in future.
Some of our embedded virtual accommodation tours don't have sufficient alternative text information; we are ensuring the page text conveys all the same information.
We are going through all video content to make sure it is correctly captioned and subtitled.
We know that some of our iFrames are missing a title, and are going through these to add an appropriate title to each.
We are working with our content management system providers to ensure our templates are built correctly. This includes use of proper headings and nesting, WAI-ARIA labelling, and working functionality.
Where links are identified by colour only, we are looking to add underlines or other visual cues. Where we wish to use colour only, for aesthetic branding purposes, we will change the hex code to make sure there is sufficient contrast.
We have used an auditor to pinpoint all pages with multiple or no titles, and are going through them all to ensure each has a single meaningful title.
Our auditor has identified several pages with the same link text used for multiple destinations; we are going through these pages to make sure every distinct link has meaningful, unique text. We will also train current and new content creators to use meaningful, unique link text.
Some of our headings and labels are not detailed enough to describe topic and purpose. We have used an auditor to identify these thin headings and labels, and are working through them to improve their meaning.
On some pages, the keyboard focus is not clearly visible on every element. We are working to introduce a template where all elements have a clearly visible focus.
We know some of our branding colours are not totally accessible. We are going to look into better hex codes and bigger text sizes to ensure all our text is readable.
Currently there is no way to skip past repeated content to a page's main, unique content. We are working to provide a heading for each block of content that is repeated on multiple web pages, to ensure this can be navigated more freely.
We have some instances of non-unique ID attributes on a single page. We are working through these to ensure all IDs are unique.
On our events listing page, there is a form to filter events by type. This form has no submit button. We are working with our content management system providers to rebuild the form so that content does not change automatically when filtered, but instead only once a submit button has been used.
We have used an auditor to find forms which do not have the correct labels. We are going through these manually to label them properly.
Some of our pages which use an older template display a WAI-ARIA alert automatically when the page is loaded. We are working with our content management system providers to remove the alert on this page, and ensure an alert is only triggered when there is an error.
Our site contains a number of PDFs created in previous years that do not meet accessibility standards.
We do not intend to reproduce existing PDFs in accessible versions as this would be a disproportionate burden. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services.
Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
We may sometimes have third party content or functionality on our website. This may include:
Where we are legally required to feature third party content, we cannot reasonably accept responsibility for ensuring it meets accessibility standards. However, for all content we have control over or have otherwise chosen to include, including that which we have paid for, we are obliged to work towards ensuring this content is accessible as possible. We are embedding accessibility into our procurement processes, meaning it is a necessary part of any contract for digital work.
We often use other applications to create official Middlesex University content. For example:
We must make sure our own content is as accessible as possible (for example, by making sure any video we upload to YouTube has appropriate subtitled, captions and audio description). However, we do not have influence over the accessibility of the platform itself (for example, the YouTube video player functionality).
In September 2020, we published our Quad Plus platform. This is an interactive platform designed to let users get a feel of the college campus and find out more information about joining as a new student.
We know this platform is not fully accessible, as it cannot be navigated by keyboard or screen reader alone. However, we have provided all the information contained within the Quad Plus platform in an accessible format, which can be reached by using the "Accessibility" link within Quad Plus.
Our University Accessibility Working Group has established a roadmap of continuous improvement to ensure as much content as possible is accessible by September 2020. Beyond this deadline, we will continue to improve accessibility wherever possible, by making changes as outlined above.
As part of our digital strategy, we plan to migrate this website to a brand new, accessible template. This will ensure the website's core build and functionality are compliant.
We test Unihub weekly using an automated tool that scans every page for problems (Siteimprove). The reports are checked at least weekly by the web team, and we aim to fix high priority issues within one week of identification.
We also conduct frequent manual testing, to pick up errors that an automated scan cannot identify.
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email accessibility@mdx.ac.uk.
We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, please email accessibility@mdx.ac.uk.
If you have contacted us about an accessibility problem but you feel that this has not been dealt with satisfactorily, we want to know.
The first stage would be to raise your concern informally. The aim of this stage is to achieve a quick and easy solution for you. It would be appropriate to take the concern through the relevant contact listed above for reporting an accessibility problem.
If, after this, we have not dealt with your concern satisfactorily, you can take it through to a formal complaint. See our policies page on the main Middlesex website for more information on making a complaint.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations in the UK. If you are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
This statement was created on 23 January 2020. It was last revised on 1 September 2020.
