Accessibility - Aimhigher West Midlands

Accessibility statement for Aimhigher West Midlands (www.aimhigherwm.ac.uk)

At Aimhigher West Midlands, we want to ensure that as many people as possible can use our website, and we are working to improve our digital services.

This accessibility statement covers this website (https://www.aimhigherwm.ac.uk) as the main website for Aimhigher West Midlands. It also covers the subdomain of the Next Steps platform (https://nextsteps.aimhigherwm.ac.uk/).

This website is run by Aimhigher West Midlands. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, this means you should be able to:

  • 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 JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We also aim to make the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible.

  • the text will not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window
  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader

Feedback and contact information

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website:

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email aimhigher@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

In your message please include the following:

  • the web address (URL) of the content
  • your email address and name
  • the format you need

We’ll consider your request and get back to you.

If you cannot view the map on our ‘Contact’ page, contact us by emailing aimhigher@contacts.bham.ac.uk for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website and are continuing to audit our content. If you find something that you are unable to access, or we have failed to identify a barrier, please let us know.

If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please email aimihigher@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

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).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Aimhigher West Midlands is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

As part of our recent accessibility improvement process, we are ensuring our websites and web content are fully compliant with WCAG 2.2. Level AA.

This site is fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

We plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2023. When we publish new content, we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Next Steps: Text does not have sufficient contrast (AA). We are working to review this while the microsite is still in development.

Navigation and accessing information

There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option).

It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content.

It’s not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping.

Disproportionate burden

At this time, we have not made any disproportionate burden claims.

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

The following items found on our websites may not be accessible and are out of scope of the accessibility regulations:

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents.

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Third-party content

Our websites contain third-party content. We do not have control over and are not responsible for the accessibility of this content, but we make best endeavours to work with the third-party to improve its accessibility. This may include:

  • Links to non-Aimhigher West Midlands websites.
  • Content/functionality on our website.
  • Content hosted on other websites, such as social media sites.
  • Documents which are sent to us and uploaded, or comments left on pages by members of the public.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared January 2023.

This statement was last reviewed January 2023.

This website was last tested on 20 June 2022. The test was carried out by Silktide. We completed a scan of all pages on the website.