The University of Oxford is committed to providing an accessible web presence that gives members of the University community full access to University information, courses and activities offered publicly through the web.

Our Equality Policy outlines our commitment to a culture which ‘maintains a working, learning and social environment in which the rights and dignity of all its staff and students are respected’.

This statement was prepared on 17 April 2020. It was last updated on 17 April 2020.

Our aims

In order to ensure that all of our visitors can use our website, these pages aim to meet Level-AA standard of WCAG 2.1. This includes elements such as:

  • Alt text for all images and providing non-visual alternatives where appropriate
  • All essential audiovisual information is captioned, described as necessary or provided in alternative formats
  • Content can be navigated with just a keyboard or speech recognition tools
  • The website can be used with a screen reader
  • Content is structured, ordered and labelled appropriately

Guidance is available for editors and moderators of this site to help them maintain accessibility standards.

How accessible this website is

We are aware that some parts of our website are not fully accessible. These include:

  • some older images do not have meaningful alt-text descriptions
  • some older multimedia content (such as podcasts or videos)
  • some tables need to be coded for sight reading technology.

We are working to address areas where our accessibility needs improvement. Please see ‘Technical information’ below and our known issues page 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

The Accessible Resources Acquisition and Creation Unit (ARACU), who are part of the Bodleian Libraries, offer alternative formats for pages on this website for students referred by the Disability Advisory Services. They produce materials in electronic text (RTF document fully structured and with XML tags for navigation) and DAISY 2.02 human voice audio. Both products can be sent out physically (DVD) or via file transfer. They can also produce Braille documents. Please contact the Unit to discuss your requirements.

Reporting issues with website accessibility

If you have any other questions or concerns about this statement or the accessibility of any of our webpages, please contact the Editorial Team: blog@politics.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 our Equality and Diversity pages.

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

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

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 websites we cover (see ‘How we tested this website’) are partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed on our known issues page.

We are currently undertaking a manual test of all of our content. If you have found a page that you do not feel is up to the appropriate standard, please contact us at: blog@politics.ox.ac.uk.

We are testing:

  • blog.politics.ox.ac.uk.

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 website content and structure. We are working with our suppliers to fix issues and think about future developments. We are also updating the ways in which we provide training and best practice to those working on our website.