Accessibility Statement
The University of Hull is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
This statement applies to content published on the main University of Hull website at www.hull.ac.uk. Other websites that also belong to the University of Hull and use sub-domains of www.hull.ac.uk are managed locally. Separate statements will be published for these sites which contain specific information relevant to them and will publish separate statements with information pertinent to them. Examples of such websites relate to research institutes and commercial arms of the University.
Compliance status
The University of Hull website is largely compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the exemptions listed below.
Using the website
We want as many people as possible to be able to use our website and we are continually working towards improving its accessibility. We follow general principles of usability and universal design and endeavour to meet level 2 (AA) of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.
In this accessibility statement, we refer to browser plug-ins and other tools that may make your experience of web content more comfortable or productive. These suggestions are provided in good faith from reputable sources but please note that plugins and software are used at your own risk. The University of Hull is not responsible for any issues arising from the use of tools or plugins over which they have no influence or control. Plugin suggestions are for the Chrome browser but similar (or identical) plugins exist for other browsers.
Our website will allow you to:
- Zoom in up to 200% without the text spilling off the screen
- On a laptop/PC browser, you can magnify text either by
increasing the default font size in your browser settings, and/or
• increasing the default font size with a browser plugin (for exampleA+ Font Size Changer Lite) and/or
• using the inbuilt browser zoom function: CTRL + (Windows) or CMD + (Mac)
- Navigate most of the website using tab, shift-tab, enter and arrow keys or speech recognition tools
- Listen to most of the website using a text to speech tool
- Skip to main content using the tab on your keyboard on most of our pages
- Pages have been designed so that users should be able to change font size and colours within the browser or using browser plug-ins likeHighContrast
- Most pages are structured with heading levels allowing screen reader users to instantly skip to the section they need. Dyslexic and other users can also benefit using browser plugins likeheadingsMap
- We provide some 360-degree tours. These are very valuable to people with particular disabilities and access needs but are not wholly accessible.
We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.
How accessible this website is
Though we are committed to making our website accessible, we know some parts of this website are not fully accessible yet. For example:
Images and multimedia
- Some multimedia and auto-scrolling content across the site cannot be paused or hidden, for example on our homepage
- Some images may not have appropriate descriptions
- Some videos may not have captions or audio descriptions, for example on our Choose Hull page
Forms and activities
- Some interactions cannot be navigated by solely using a keyboard, e.g our search function. We are currently rebuilding this feature which will resolve this issue
Navigation and keyboard
- On some of our older page templates, it is not clear where the current tab focus is.
- Skip links are not always available for repeated content like menus. An example is our Visit Us page
- The tab order on some pages does not always support the visual layout, for example on some of our course pages
Page view and personalisation
- The use of some colours on our website may cause contrast issues (see Admissions as an example)
- Many PDFs are not yet fully accessible to screen reader software or users requiring high magnification with reflow. We recommend readers to open the PDFs in Microsoft Word. The Web layout view in Word is likely to give a better reflow and magnification experience up to 500%. Immersive Reader in Word also gives a range of reading options. An example is a PDF document on our admissions policies
Please see our technical information section below to find out more about the known accessibility issues on our website, and what we are doing to resolve these.
Making changes to your device
There are several customisation options for your browser and device that could help you use this website and other websites more effectively.
AbilityNet provides advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reason(s):
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
Images and multimedia
We recognise there are some issues with our images and multimedia and aim to have the majority resolved by August 2025, except when the audio or video is a media alternative for text and is clearly labelled as such:
- Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information (WCAG: 1.1.1)
Navigation and keyboard
The majority of the below will be resolved by December 2024, however, we estimate the full piece of work will be resolved by the end of 2025. We will provide updates on our progress, on this webpage:
- Some headings, regions, lists, and tables are not coded appropriately (WCAG: 1.3.1)
- Some elements visually styled as headings are not coded as such (WCAG: 1.3.1)
- Tabbed content doesn't always have an appropriate role (WCAG: 1.3.1)
- It isn’t always possible to skip elements that are repeated across all our web pages (WCAG: 2.4.1)
- Our pages don’t always have descriptive and informative titles (WCAG: 2.4.2)
- The navigation order of links, form elements and similar parts of our webpages isn’t always logical and intuitive (WCAG: 2.4.3)
- Few of our current PDFs are tagged with a heading structure. This makes it more difficult for screenreader users. (WCAG: 1.3.1)
Page view and personalisation
The majority of the below will be resolved by December 2024, however, we estimate the full piece of work will be resolved during 2025. We will provide updates on our progress, on this webpage:
- Our text and image contrast ratio is not always high enough (WCAG: 1.4.3)
- Sometimes you lose content when you reduce the screen size (WCAG: 1.4.10)
- We don’t have a consistent contrast ratio of 3:1 for elements like buttons, images and links (WCAG: 1.4.11)
- Sometimes you lose content and functionality when line spacing, paragraph spacing, font size and letter spacing are increased (WCAG: 1.4.12)
- Sometimes resizing visually rendered text up to 200% causes the text, image or controls to be clipped, truncated or obscured (WCAG: 1.4.4)
- Some of our automatically moving content can’t be paused or stopped (WCAG: 2.2.2)
- Many PDFs will not reflow effectively - for example, the content may be truncated on page breaks (WCAG: 1.4.10)
Cookie Banner:
Issue: At 400% zoom, content within the cookie banner does not reflow to fit the webpage. This results in users needing to scroll horizontally to view the entire banner, which is not compliant with WCAG 2.1 SC 1.4.10 (Reflow).
Users with visual impairments who rely on high magnification may find it difficult to read and interact with the cookie banner, potentially missing important information or consent options.
Chatbox Issues:
WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content:
Issue: Images on the chatbox lack alternative text, meaning screen readers cannot convey the information these images represent to users with visual impairments.
Impact: Users with sight loss are unable to perceive the content or function of images, leading to a lack of access to essential information.
WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value:
Issue: Elements with aria-hidden="true" should not be focusable or contain focusable elements, as this can confuse users who rely on assistive technology.
When a focusable element is hidden using aria-hidden="true", it is ignored by screen readers but remains in the tab order, causing confusion for users navigating with a keyboard or screen reader.
Disproportionate Burden
This section covers issues that we cannot fix right now. We’ve assessed the cost of fixing these issues but believe that doing so would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the law.
The University is currently in the process of procuring a new website with the view to go live in Summer 2025. The build and design for this is currently underway and the issues highlighted throughout this statement will be addressed as part of this process. Many of the issues highlighted are costly and time consuming to address with this version of the site and will be addressed as part of the new site build.
Third parties
There would be a disproportionate burden to do an accessibility audit for our third-party suppliers. We are, however, contacting these providers and asking them to publish accessibility statements with a view to continuing our work with them.
Chatbox
This website element is provided by a third-party vendor. We have notified the supplier about the issue with their product and requested a resolution. Currently, we are unable to alter this element without replacing the supplier (Uniquest using the Salesforce platform), which we deem a disproportionate burden as it would require a wholescale replacement of our CRM. Upon the supplier's contract renewal, we will take these accessibility requirements into account during the procurement process.
Cookie Banner
This website element is provided by a third-party vendor. We have notified the supplier about the issue with their product and requested a resolution. Currently, we are unable to alter this element without replacing the supplier (Cookiebot), which we deem a disproportionate burden as we have just entered into a contract with. Upon the supplier's contract renewal, we will take these accessibility requirements into account during the procurement process.
For third parties where accessibility statements are already available, please see the third party provider’s own webpage
The content is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
PDFs and other documents
Some non-essential PDF documents that were published before 23 September 2018 may not be fully accessible. All subsequent PDF documents will comply with accessibility regulations.
Maps
Our website has online maps which are unlikely to be fully accessible because of the assistive technologies used in their development. An alternative format is provided in most circumstances. For example, links to PDF files, such as our campus map where this is intended for navigational use.
Third party-content
Our site uses third-party content which may not be fully accessible. This includes content we publish on social media channels such as Twitter or YouTube. We are responsible for ensuring the accessibility of the content we produce, however, we have no control over the accessibility of these platforms.
For further details on our third-party systems and their content, please see the third party providers page.
Multimedia published pre-Sept 23/2020
Not all of our audio or videos items have captions or transcriptions, and some videos without audio should ideally have audio descriptions. We are working to develop transcripts or alternative versions of all our videos and audios published on or after September 2020.
Livestream
Live-streamed video does not always have captions, depending on presenter tools and confidence. This is exempt from the regulations. Recorded videos have automated speech recognition and transcripts
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This version of the statement was prepared on 16/07/2024
This statement was first prepared on 23 Sept 2020. It was previously reviewed on 26 April 2022.
- We worked withAbilityNet in 2022 to produce a detailed report on a sample of our most popular pages to highlight issues.
- We have commissioned a further accessibility audit that will take place in Summer and Autumn 2024 in order to maintain the levels of accessibility. The results of this audit will be factored in the build of our new website
- This website is scanned automatically every five days using Siteimprove. The scan report highlights any content that is not compliant with WCAG 2.1.
- Key page types were sampled with a suite of automated testing tools (WAVE, Site Improve and Lighthouse).
- We manually check pages/sites albeit with limited resources.
The statement was last reviewed on [insert date of latest review].
Feedback and contact information
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, Word or HTML please contact us using the details below and let us know what it is you’re trying to find out about. We will aim to get back to you within 5 working days:
Digital Team
Student Recruitment & Marketing Directorate
University of Hull
Cottingham Road
Hull
HU6 7RX
Email: digital@hull.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (01482) 346311
It may also be possible to contact us directly via Live Chat or Messenger from our homepage.
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).