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Accessibility statement

This statement relates specifically to the Examination Regulations website:
http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/

If you have any feedback on this statement, please contact:
examinationregulationsenquiries@admin.ox.ac.uk

If you are looking for the University Web Accessibility Standard (which is a different document), please go to http://www.ox.ac.uk/web/rules/accessibility.shtml

Note on numbered paragraphs:

Where numbered paragraphs are used below, the numbers correspond to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Version 1.

How to get this information in alternative formats

We offer alternative formats for pages on this website. To request an alternative format for specific pages, contact examinationregulationsenquiries@admin.ox.ac.uk . Provision will normally be within 15 working days of acknowledgement. We normally offer the following alternative formats:

  • Braille
  • Large Print
  • Audio (CD)

Making changes to your operating system

Navigation

The printed edition of the Examination Regulations has a contents section at the beginning. This is also to be found in the online version, at:

http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/examregs/contents.shtml

In addition there is a drop-down menu which enables you to identify a course under any one of its likely titles. The online version will in the future also have a simple search facility.

We are working to attain the following standard:

  • All pages, in future, to include a search box. The Examination Regulations site will provide a search facility across the wide Central Administration website as well as its own local site search. Although neither will be available on this site at time of launch, both will be an early upgrade.
  • Link text not duplicated on a given page; two links with the same link text to always point to the same address.
  • No "javascript:" pseudo-links. All links to be capable of being followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off. The drop-down menu on the home page of the Examination Regulations site does not depend on Javascript; instead, it uses server-side technology.
  • No links opening new windows without warning.
  • A uniform side menu across all of the site
  • 'Skip to navigation' and 'skip to search' links provided for users of screen readers. (If you are using a screen reader you will be presented with the page content first, followed by the navigation, search, and page footer information).
  • A breadcrumb trail provided on each page of the site to show the page the user is on within the site.

Images

We are working to attain the following standard:

  • All content images to use descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics to use a “null” ALT attribute. A few pages on the Examination Regulations site use images for special characters – in Arabic and Oriental and other languages, for example – for which no way was found be supported in the majority of visual browsers for displaying these on screen. These images have been given the corresponding character entity value as alt text: this may make rendering possible in any screen readers or display devices that do support them.

Visual design

Our templates have been designed to provide the following:

  • Background and foreground colours with a high degree of contrast to maximise visibility. Colours are controlled within the stylesheet and may be overriden by altering your browser settings.
  • Relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers. For example, if you're using Internet Explorer, you can make your default text size larger under the "View" menu, "Text Size", "Larger" (or "Largest").
  • Readable content for browsers that do not support stylesheets. (Although layout and formatting may be lost, the content will still be readable).

Browser-specific notes

Users should note that, although the site supports basic rendering for legacy browsers, accessibility features are optimised for users of Internet Explorer versions higher than 5, Netscape versions higher than 4, and other browsers complying to the W3C standards.

If you are using Opera 8.02 or higher for Mac OS X you may find issues with the built-in print view. To resolve this, go to the 'Print' dialog box. In the drop-down menu that starts with 'Copies & Pages' select Opera; deselect the option to print page with background.

If you are using Netscape 4 to view the Examination Regulations website, you will find that the site-specific “View Numbering” function (activated by clicking a link at the bottom of the pages) does not work. This may also be the case in some other legacy browsers.

Our conformance claim for this site

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.

All pages should validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict. The templates use Cascading Style Sheets which can be read by CSS-P compliant and non-compliant browsers. These templates meet the checkpoints of the Web Accessibility Initiative's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, as specified by the University of Oxford Web Accessibility Policy to Level-A standards, as well as Levels AA and AAA where possible. We are working towards all pages using structured semantic markup. For example, H1 used for main page headings, and H2 for subsequent section headings within each web page. (This way, JAWS users can skip to the next section of a page using ALT+INSERT+2.) At present, some pages in the Examination Regulations site do contain text that looks visually like – and functions as – a heading, but is not marked up semantically as such. It is intended to address this as future work.

The CSS deployed does not validate because of a hack that is used (four times) to make the left hand navigation bar display correctly in one make of browser on one operating system.

5.1 We have chosen not to use some of the available XHTML table mark-up features. For example, the rowgroup attributes 'THEAD', 'TBODY', and 'TFOOT' because some legacy browsers do not support them. ID and HEADERS are not used on most of our tables either. These elements are reserved for complex tables (such as tables with other tables nested within them).

Where we have chosen not to meet Level-AA at present

3.2 The search results page code for searches of externally available content does not validate to the W3C validation service. This is due to restrictions on our access to a third-party service. The Examination Regulations site will launch without a search function initially, but when the search is added as an early upgrade, this point about the results page will apply.

13.1 The title attribute has not been used on links, but whenever possible, links are written to make sense out of context. Many browsers (such as JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera) can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list separately from the page.

Where Level-AAA has not been met

9.4 A tab order has not been established using the "tabindex" attribute.

13.6 Grouping related links has not been followed (for example, by using the 'MAP' attribute). But see 10.5 below.

Where we have chosen not to meet Level-AAA at present

9.5 We have chosen not to employ access keys. Research suggests that these can sometimes conflict with shortcut keys used by assistive technologies.

10.4 We have chosen to leave text boxes (such as in 'search') blank.

10.5 Respecting the requirement to separate adjacent links with more than whitespace, the navigation links are marked up as an unordered list, so we feel that this requirement has been met as best as currently possible.

See also: