Website accessibility statement

On this page:

Accessibility statement for the Winning Students Scotland website

This accessibility statement applies to the www.winningstudents-scotland.ac.uk website.

This website is run by the University of Stirling. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. 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.

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 have a disability.

How accessible this website is

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

  • on some pages line height is below minimum value
  • many older videos don’t have captions.

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, please email duncan.fisher@stir.ac.uk. We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

This website is managed by the University of Stirling. If you find any problems which aren't listed on this page, or think that we're not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations then please email webteam@stir.ac.uk to let us know.

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).

Contacting us by phone

You can get in touch with the Winning Students team at the University of Stirling by calling +44 (0) 1786 466572.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The University of Stirling 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

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Issues with colour contrast

We are aware of issues with colour contrast on this site. We plan to identify and fix these by the end of July 2022.

These issues fail WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3: Contrast (Minimum):

  • some pages have text without sufficient contrast between the text and background.

Content that’s 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’re not essential to providing our services.

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

Pre-recorded audio

We do not plan to add an alternative format for pre-recorded audio published before 23 September 2020, because this is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

Maps

We use a map to show locations of colleges and universities in the Winning Students network. This map is not fully accessible to all assistive technology. Maps are currently not within the scope of the accessibility regulations.

Third party content

Third party content displayed on this website that's under someone else’s control and which we have not paid for or developed is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations. Examples on www.winningstudents-scotland.ac.uk include feeds from social media channels.

How we test this website

We currently use automated testing to drive most of our improvements to accessibility on our site. Automated testing can't find everything that could be improved, but is rarely wrong about what it does find.

There are a number of accessibility features which we test manually, which include:

  • manual checks against the W3C validator
  • ensuring that page elements render correctly at all sizes, including when zoomed to 300%
  • reviewing ARIA labelling to ensure it is descriptive
  • checking the tab order on pages for keyboard navigation
  • colour contrast, which is normally done at design stage by using tools.

This website undergoes automated testing against the W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines using the automated Siteimprove tool. This tool scans 100% of our web pages every few days, and tests against all the criteria in the guidelines which are possible to automate.

The reports generated by Siteimprove are reviewed by the website content and development teams, with any actions taken and prioritised into our future work.

We also test a selection of the most visited pages on our website using the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool which facilitates human evaluation of web content.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We will introduce more methods to test www.winningstudents-scotland.ac.uk for accessibility beyond automated software, and ensure information and support for accessible content creation is communicated to everyone who contributes to www.winningstudents-scotland.ac.uk

This will include:

  • training content contributors and CMS editors to ensure content is always created with accessiblity in mind
  • creating a accessible document guidelines
  • examining microdata markup and alt text using special tools
  • checking content in a text-only browser
  • testing using screen readers to read text aloud
  • testing using disability simulation tools to browse the website
  • testing with real assistive technology users.

Other sites within our domain

There are many different subsites and systems across our domain. Accessibility statements for such systems and subsites will be provided locally.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 18 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 2 June 2022.