Oxford Mosaic Accessibility Statement

This statement applies to the Oxford Mosaic Web Platform, which is the central web publishing platform for the University of Oxford.

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 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’.

The Mosaic platform provides the publishing toolkit and hosting for more than 700 websites published by Oxford University. This statement explains the accessibility compliance factors common to all those sites, due to their hosting on the Platform.

Our aims

The Oxford Mosaic Web Platform is run by the IT Services department at the University of Oxford. We want as many people as possible to be able to use Mosaic websites. 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 using just a keyboard
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 NVDA and VoiceOver)

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

Guidance is available for content editors of Mosaic websites to help them maintain accessibility standards.

How accessible Oxford Mosaic websites are

We know some parts of the websites published by Oxford Mosaic are not accessible:

Page headers need to be improved to correct the ordering of elements for screen readers and keyboard users and remove duplication

Individual Mosaic websites may also have accessibility features and issues relating to the specific content they publish and 3rd party tools they make use of. Details of these are given on individual sites, where applicable.

We may also identify further issues as we continue to work through the analysis of the results of an external accessibility audit of the Platform (see ‘Preparation of this Accessibility Statement’ below).

Information in alternative formats

Students and staff of the University may make use of the free SensusAccess tool on the Bodleian website to convert certain types of files into a more accessible format, such as accessible text, audio, e-book or digital braille. Content editors may also make use of this tool on behalf of website users.

If you need further information or wish to discuss provision of an alternative format, please contact the editor of the site you are viewing using the site's Contact information, or contact the Mosaic Platform team.

Reporting issues with website accessibility

If you have any questions or concerns about the accessibility of any Oxford Mosaic webpages, please contact the editor of the site you are viewing at the Contact information given in the first instance. If you have difficulty finding this information, or to escalate concerns or comment on this statement, please contact the Mosaic Platform team. Please give the website name or URL web address of the page you are viewing.

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).

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 our websites’ 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.

Oxford Mosaic websites are 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

We are in the process of responding to an external audit of the Mosaic platform – see ‘Preparation of this accessibility statement’ for more information. This section of our statement will be updated as this work proceeds. Our earlier internal assessment identified the following issues, which we are currently working to resolve.

Issues with navigation and operability

Improvements to the standard page header are required to fix multiple issues:

The Search box is read out to Screen Readers first, instead of the order of the header elements being consistent with that of the visual layout (WCAG 2.1 1.3.1)
The tab order for navigating the header with a keyboard is not consistent with that of the visual layout (WCAG 2.1 2.1.1)
There is duplication of the logo, search and navigation menu elements for Screen Readers. This is due to the rendering of desktop and mobile versions not being handled correctly when CSS is disabled (WCAG 2.1 2.4.4, 3.2.3 and 4.1.1)

We plan to reimplement our page Header to address these issues by August 2022.

There are a few cases of obsolete or redundant mark-up in the web-page code that need to be removed to ensure that page rendering is reliable (WCAG 2.1 4.1.1). This will be corrected by August 2022 as part of the reimplementation of page Headers.

Issues with text

Resizing text above 150% causes the Search box icon to overflow its context, so that it’s less clear where to click to submit a Search (WCAG 2.1 1.4.4). This will be corrected by August 2022 as part of the reimplementation of page Headers.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We want our websites to offer the best experience possible for all of our users. In addition to our plan to implement fixes for the issues identified in internal and external audits of the Platform, we are working in several other ways:

assessing a code linter tool to flag accessibility issues in code prior to deployment, to assist us in ensuring all future Platform enhancements are fully accessible before release
reviewing module updates to the Platform as they arise to see where they may offer new accessibility features
working with colleagues within IT Services to establish a departmental Accessibility Champions Network to share and promote good accessibility practice across the range of IT functions

A Digital Accessibility Working Group has been established to oversee the University’s implementation of the WCAG 2.1 guidelines. The group continues to work to provide clear guidance, recommendations, expertise and experiential knowledge to departments and colleges in their adoption of inclusive digital practices to meet the requirements of the accessibility regulations.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 20 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 9 June 2022.

The Platform was last tested on 16 July 2021. The test was carried out by AbilityNet. There are some outstanding areas to analyse from the report of this test, which we expect to complete by 31 August 2022. We aim to implement the improvements required by 30 November 2022.

Other sites within the ox.ac.uk domain

This statement does not cover the University of Oxford’s main website http://www.ox.ac.uk/. Please refer to the accessibility statement for ox.ac.uk if your query concerns that site.

Some larger Mosaic sites also publish their own accessibility information, detailing content compliance. In particular, a statement for the key group of University Administration and Services websites is available.

A large number of other websites (Mosaic and non-Mosaic) exist, including those of various divisions and departments, museums and libraries and more. Accessibility statements may be found locally on each site.