Accessibility statement for Imperial College London website

This accessibility statement applies to content published on the Imperial domain www.imperial.ac.uk/. It does not apply to content accessed via another domain/subdomain e.g., https://asset-library.imperial.ac.uk or http://icis.imperial.ac.uk etc.   

For other web addresses, you should refer to the accessibility statement for that domain or subdomain.  

This website is run by Imperial College London.   

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 400% without the text spilling off the screen  
  • navigate most of the website using a keyboard or speech recognition software 
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and Voice-over)  

We have 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 the website is 

There are over 400 staff at Imperial who have access to publish content on the website. We share accessibility reminders regularly with all, and offer an accessibility training module to all new and existing members of the content creators' community, however, due to sheer size of the whole website (Over 50,000 pages) and the number of contributors, some of this content still may not be fully accessible, for example:  

  • some PDFs and other documents only partially compatible with screen readers. 
  • most video content that was uploaded pre-2020, does not have captions, transcriptions, or audio descriptions  
  • some tables do not have row headers  
  • some pages have elements with poor colour contrast  
  • some heading elements are not consistent   
  • some error messages are not clearly associated with form controls  
  • some parts of the website may not be navigable with keyboard only 
  • some elements on this website do not respond to screen readers (mobile and web) 
  • some images are missing alternative texts 

You can find the details of inaccessible content below under the “non-compliance with the accessibility regulations” section.   

We are constantly working on improving our website’s digital accessibility and are in the process of re-designing our website from scratch with much higher accessibility levels. Please contact us at [email protected] should you need any support at any part of your journey on our website.   

Feedback and contact information 

If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact [email protected] 

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille please contact [email protected]   

We will consider your request and get back to you in seven working days.  
  
If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page, call us at +44 (0) 207589 5111 or email us [email protected] for directions.  

We have installed DeafWatch transmitters across twenty-nine buildings at our campuses.  

The DeafWatch system works across multiple buildings, providing seamless but discreet day and nighttime fire alarm warnings for staff and students with a hearing impairment. Pagers are available via the College Fire Office and the College's Disability Advisory Service.  

Please contact us on 020 7594 8000 before your planned visit to arrange suitable support for your needs. 

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 

Imperial College London 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

The website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.2 AA standard. 

This website is partially compliant with the  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 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

  • Some pages have non text elements that are missing alternative accessible texts. The Faculty Landing and Business pages that decorative profile images, publication thumbnails and hero images have an unnecessarily informative alternative attribute This fails WCAG 1.1.1 non-text Content criteria. We are working on adding alternative texts to all images if they convey critical information or marking these as decorative. We are aiming to resolve this issue by October 2025.  
  • Across many of the Content Pages and the Business pages, adjacent image links and text links to the same location are not combined. Images which are adjacent to link text should be appropriately combined with the link text and should have a blank alternative attribute. This prevents elements from being announced multiple times which can result in confusion for screen reader users.  This fails 1.1.1 non-text content Criteria. We are working on resolving this issue. We are aiming to resolve this issue by February 2025.  
  • Subscribe to the Enterprise Newsletter Page has a submit button which does not have an accessible label. This may result in users of screen readers being unable to determine the purpose of the button. This fails 1.1.1 non-text content Criteria. We are working on resolving this issue. We are aiming to resolve this issue by February 2025. 
  • Subscribe to newsletter pages -where applicable- within the Mailchimp forms, the email address and name fields do not have an autocomplete attribute. An autocomplete attribute helps users with mobility impairments programmatically determine the input in common fields which helps users avoid unnecessary strain when navigating. This fails 1.3.5 Identify input purpose criteria. We are working with our supplier for this embed (Mailchimp) for the best possible resolution for this issue.  
  • On some forms when entering the information that is not in a correct format -such as email-, the error reads only “Email must be formatted correctly” which is not sufficient. It is expected that errors provide an informative example of the expected format. This fails 3.3.1 error identification criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2025 
  • On event Listing part of the pages, the ‘Filter Results by’ form field do not have a form label.  Also ‘Search for Events by Keyword’ field is contained within a field set which is not defined by a legend. A field set may be announced incorrectly without a legend to define it. Users of screen readers may struggle to complete form fields which do not have a field label such as filtering, and without a legend ‘search for event by keyword’ as this may announce confusingly. This fails 1.3.1 Info and relationships criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by February 2024.  
  • On the main menu, menu label is “open navigation overlay” which does not match the visual label of “menu”. On the Faculty Landing page, the faculty leadership elements do not begin with “Bio” or “Email” within the accessible label. Users of speech recognition may use the visual label to inform their commands, whereas the software will use the accessible label to perform those commands. This fails 2.5.3 Label in name criteria. We are aiming o resolve this by February 2025. 
  • Many link elements such as sidebar, send email and profile links have a size of between 19 to 20 pixels in height on the issue pages. Users with mobility impairments may struggle to interact with targets which are not of sufficient size. It is expected that all target sizes have a minimum size of 24 by 24 pixels. This fails 2.5.8 Target Size (minimum) criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by February 2025.  
  • On some of the forms and search functions status messages, such as form submission confirmations, and search being complete are not announced by screen readers. “Course search” page, upon interacting with the filters and the drop down present on the page, the page content updates, however this change is not announced to the user.  This fails 4.1.3 status messages criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2025.  
  • Most of the pre-recorded videos on this website are on “YouTube” platform. They have closed captions. However, this platform does not offer ‘audio description’ or ‘text transcript’ This fails 1.2.3 Audio description or Media alternative (Pre-recorded) criteria. To overcome this issue, we are making sure all our videos are presented either as an alternative to the information on the relevant web page or have a supporting function. So that our users with loss of vision do not miss on any critical information.   
  • Under 400% zoom; on Study- ‘undergraduate’ page when opening the ‘compare’ menu the user is unable to scroll the overlay, resulting in some of the options being inaccessible. Under 400% zoom on study- ‘electrical electronic engineering’ page When opening the video present on the page, the close button to close the video is displayed behind the video with no alternative way of closing the video overlay. Under 400% zoom on ‘subjects’ page, content on the page overlaps each other resulting in some text being difficult to read. This fails 1.4.10 Reflow criteria. WE are aiming to resolve this by October 2025.  
  • All the elements within the pages cannot be navigated by keyboard only.  On Undergraduate Course Search page, (when viewing the search page), the compare button overlay is not opened and displayed to the user. Instead, their focus is shifted to the filter section of the page. On Electrical Electronic Engineering page: interaction with the tab controls result in content being replaced by new content. These would cause the content not to load resulting in sections of the page rendering incorrectly. This fails 2.1.1 Keyboard only navigation criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2025.  
  • Following pages under some browsers in-built zoom or font size adjustments do not respond to 200% text resize. Elements are either partially obscured, cut off or overlapped. Making it difficult for the user to read the page.  Study page, Subjects page, Operational improvement page, Tech campus page, Parents page, Home page. This fails 1.4.4 Resize Text criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2025. 
  • On “Tech Campus” or “Home” pages, when applying a custom CSS text styling, the hero text on the page renders over the top of the navigation header. This may make some text difficult to read. This fails 1.4.12 Text spacing criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2025.

On the mobile version of this website, when navigating all pages using a mobile screen reader and opening the navigation menu, slash and greater than elements are announced which may cause confusion for users. In addition to this, the slashes within breadcrumb elements are announced. Accordion elements on the tested pages are not announced as expanded or collapsed which may lead to confusion over the function of these elements. When viewing articles, it was also observed that expand article buttons were focused but not announced which may lead to confusion for users. This fails 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2024.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/ and sub URLS (pages such as .../jobs/search-jobs and .../jobs/apply etc) non-compliances:  

  • We have now updated our "job description" .PDF templates, to meet WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility criteria, and started publishing new job adverts with this compliant version. However, there may be a few "Job description" .PDF documents that are still showing following non-compliances, if they were published prior to 22 July 2024:  
  • Missing Page title, this fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion, 2.4.2 Page titled. As of 22 July 2024, all our " Job description”. PDfs documents are in the new accessible format. We are aiming to resolve this by 1 October 2025. 
  • Missing language attribute. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion, 3.1.1 Language of Page. As of 22 July 2024, all our " Job description”. PDfs documents are in the new accessible format. We are aiming to resolve this by 1 October 2025. 
  • Non text elements Missing Tags. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion, 1.1.1 non-Text content. As of 22 July 2024, all our " Job description”. PDfs documents are in the new accessible format. We are aiming to resolve this by 1 October 2025. 
  • Document missing tags. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion, 1.3.1 Info and relationships. As of 22 July 2024, all our " Job description”. PDfs documents are in the new accessible format. We are aiming to resolve this by 1 October 2025. 

Should you have any difficulty during your job application either due to PDF accessibility issues or any other reason please contact [email protected]   

Disproportionate burden 

N/A 

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  

We do try our best to add captions to live videos as much as possible, even though live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.  

What we are doing to improve accessibility  

We are working on the findings of our latest accessibility testing and are aiming to resolve all issues listed under Non-compliance section above. We are aiming to meet the WCAG 2.2 AA standards as best as we can.

Preparation of this accessibility statement 

This statement was prepared on 10 June 2020. 

Reviewed on following dates: 

  • 3 August 2021 
  • 27 June 2022 
  • 08 November 2023  
  • 17 May 2024 
  • 24 July 2024 
  • 14 August 2024 
  • It was last reviewed on 15 September 2024

This website was last tested on 16 June and 22 August 2024.  These audits were carried out by Zoonou Ltd.  

Previously, an audit of the website was carried out by our internal teams on 20 May 2024, using automated testing tools (Google Chrome Accessibility Insights for Web) as well as manual testing against WCAG 2.2 AA. Last audit before that was carried out by the same accessibility quality assurance consultancy company named Zoonou on 8 April 2022 against WCAG 2.1 AA criteria.   

As we have over 50,000 pages on our website, we had to select a limited number of pages to be tested. We wanted to include as many pages as possible within our budget in this audit, the criteria on choosing the pages to be tested was the level of traffic, or the pages that would have a potential to be visited by a wider audience.   

Outside of the Level A and AA test execution, user journeys have been conducted to test the website's usability against various assistive technology combinations.   

URLs that were tested on our latest accessibility audit 

  • Undergraduate Course Search 
  • Electrical Electronic Engineering 
  • Study 
  • Subjects 
  • Operational Improvement 
  • Tech Campus
  • Alumni 
  • Parents 
  • Home 
  • Imperial for Business 
  • ICT  
  • Business Page 

Test environments 

  • Chrome 127 - JAWS (desktop screen reader) 
  • Edge 127 - NVDA (desktop screen reader) 
  • Safari 16- macOS VoiceOver (desktop screen reader) 
  • Safari 16 - iOS VoiceOver (mobile screen reader) 
  • Chrome 127 - TalkBack (mobile screen reader) 
  • Windows Magnifier (screen magnifier) 
  • Chrome 127 - Dragon Naturally Speaking (speech recognition) 

Accessibility at Imperial