ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT FOR BANGOR UNIVERSITY

COVID-19 – Update to Accessibility Statement February 2021

During the Covid-19 outbreak Bangor University recognizes the importance of continuing to encourage good practice in creating accessible resources and providing accessible means of communication for all. Bangor University is using Microsoft Teams to enable direct communication between staff and students. Microsoft Teams has integrated accessibility features including Immersive Reader and live closed captioning (English only), for further information please see this Accessibility overview of Microsoft Teams.

For live online teaching in academic year 2020/21 we will also be using Blackboard Collaborate Ultra. As required, recorded collaborate sessions will be uploaded to Panopto and encoded to include captions.
During this period we also recommend AbilityNet resources for further support and guidance. AbilityNet are currently offering webinars that will be useful for both Staff and Students.

Accessibility statement for Bangor University Websites

This accessibility statement applies to the Bangor University web site and blackboard Virtual Learning Environment.

Bangor University is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

These websites are run by Bangor University. We want as many people as possible to be able to use these 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 JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver).

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you are disabled.

How accessible are our websites?

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;
  • live video streams in Collaborate do not have captions;
  • some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or Braille:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, contact the IT (Information Technology) Helpdesk above.

Enforcement procedure

If you have reported a problem with our website or asked for an alternative format, but you are not happy with our response, you can use our University complaints process to register your difficulty; this helps us improve our systems. Should you wish to make a complaint you should write to the University’s Governance and Compliance Office in the first instance (info-compliance@bangor.ac.uk) explaining the grounds for your complaint.

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).

Contacting us

You can contact us by email. Due to the current coronavirus pandemic; if you wish to visit in person please email first; 

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

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

We work to achieve and maintain the AA standards of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. This website is 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

  • Using browser plugins users can modify the line height of text on some, but not all, of our pages;
  • Older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. In July 2020, the Ally tool was added to Blackboard making it easier for students to request accessible versions of older PDF’s that may be in Blackboard;
  • Descriptive text in some hypertext links may not be informative;
  • Images in our content may not have alternative text descriptions;
  • We are unable to offer automatic machine captioning for our Welsh medium videos as the technology to perform this process is not available yet. To caption each Welsh medium video would require a translator to human caption each video and doing so would be a disproportionate burden to our current services;
  • Some of our older promotional and teaching related videos do not have captions;
  • Live Blackboard Collaborate video streams do not have captions;
  • Some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard, all online forms are currently being reviewed.

If we have failed to identify a barrier, please contact us.

Disproportionate burden

We are unable to offer automatic machine captioning for our Welsh medium videos as the technology to perform this process is not available  yet. To caption each Welsh medium video would require a translator to human caption each video and doing so would be a disproportionate burden to our current services.

We will regularly assess this situation and aim to provide automatic machine captions for Welsh Medium videos as soon the technology becomes available.

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services. Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Live video

At Bangor we use either Teams or Collaborate for live video streams. Collaborate does not offer captions for live video. Live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations. Recordings made of Collaborate sessions that will be kept for longer than 14 days should be uploaded to Panopto which will apply automated machine captions.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

To address legacy content on our Blackboard system that may have accessibility issues we have invested in the Ally product. This will enable Blackboard content to be available in several accessible formats.

The University is committed to making tools available to help in digital accessibility. We provide training for staff in the use of Microsoft Office 365 tools that can check documents for accessibility standards. Office 365 software also has inbuilt features to assist in accessibility including screen readers. The Microsoft Accessibility webpage provides links to further information about the Office 365 accessibility tools.

We subscribe to the Sensus access tool for staff and students to convert documents that might not currently be accessible into accessible formats.

We have set all our videos uploaded to Panopto to be automatically machine captioned. Machine Generated Captions will be automatically added to all recordings made since September 2017.

The University’s Microsoft licence also allows our users access to MS-Stream. This online service will provide automated captioning of videos loaded into it.

The Blackboard modules for Sept 2020 onwards will be using the Blackboard Ultra course view; this removes the ability to create complex course structures and will simplify course organization for students.

The University is currently developing a Digital Technology Strategy within which “all the aims are committed to providing a service that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.”

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was last updated 20th January 2021 in consultation with the Digital Accessibility Group with stakeholders from across the University. We update this statement regularly and will next review it in May 2021.