Road map

Accessibility Road Map

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. We plan to make the following changes to make the site more accessible:

At the moment it is not easy for keyboard users to access the drop-down menus listed under our top-level menu headers. This makes the site hard to navigate and utilise for keyboard-only users. By September 2020 we will create a site map (to complement our existing Site A-Z) and add clear links to each sub-page on the landing page of each site sub-section. We will look for a technical solution for this when we next review our content management software (Spring 2021).

Not all of our pages have header elements for titles and sub-titles. Some pages have images as page title headers. We will add title header and sub-header elements to all pages and ensure all image titles have clear alternative text by September 2020.
Although our pages are navigable when stylesheets are disabled, we will make improvements to pages that are less clear than others. We will seek ways to improve access to key pages (e.g. 'contact us', 'site map', 'A-Z') from the site header and consider this issue when we review our CMS. We plan to make these page improvements in the coming months.
Some of our images do not have a text description. All non-decorative images (including charts or diagrams) will have have an accompanying alt text description: we plan to have this work finished in September 2020.
We will check any existing video or audio content on the site is properly described and alternative formats provided or signposted. Video ‘play’ buttons will be to be added to all video content as a separate link where a ‘play’ icon has been included in the video image. We plan to do this work by Spring 2021.

We will contact our current CMS supplier to see if a field name can be added to the 'Name' field in our forms, if a 'review' option can be added and if error messages can be edited. We plan to do this by September 2020. We will also address these issues when we review our current CMS.
We will contact our current CMS supplier to see if slideshow transitions can be stopped or paused by users. We plan to do this by September 2020. We will also address these issues when we review our current CMS.
We will investigate to see if there is a different 'theme' that we can apply to our current website to improve the zoom function to eliminate horizontal scrolling and the colour contrasts. We plan to do this by September 2020. We will also address these issues when we review our current CMS.
All website editors will be updated on good practice in relation to accessibility: writing clear link descriptions, non-visual instructions, use of header elements, addition of alt text to images, colour contrast checking, updating of the site map/A-Z and use of the WAVE accessibility tool to check new pages. We plan to do this by September 2020.
Creating accessible documents: we will train all Library & Knowledge Service staff to create accessible Word and pdf documents so all new documents on the site meet current standards relating to header fonts, link descriptions, accessible instructions, and include descriptions of images, charts and tables. We plan to do this by the end of 2020.