Accessibility statement for soas.ac.uk

You can change the colours, contrast levels, font styles and magnify the page to 300% without the text spilling off the screen.

Navigating by headings

Use browser plugins or assistive technology such as screen readers to list the headings and subheadings in the page and go straight to the heading you need.

Navigating by links

Users of assistive technology such as screen readers can get a list of all the links on a page and understand their purpose from the link text.

Navigating by keyboard

Users navigating by keyboard can see the currently focused on interactive element such as links and form fields through a highlighted outline.

Use text to speech browser plugins or assistive technology to listen to content you select with the mouse or keyboard.

Screen reader users can listen to content, navigate the site and interact with menus.

My Computer My Way (MCMW) offer guides to using assistive technologies to use websites with a range of devices.

Making changes to your device or system

AbilityNet has advice on making your devices easier to use if you have a disability. In addition, major operating systems produce the following guidance:

• Advice for Microsoft users
• Advice for Apple users
• Advice for Linux users
• Advice for Android users

Additional external resources

• BBC accessibility website: My Web My Way
• World Wide Web Consortium - W3
• The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB)
• Disability Discrimination Act
• The Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA)

Our website is developed using valid HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to the standards laid out in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) - Level AA.

The website content works with assistive technologies for example, screen readers or text only browsers.

We undertake accessibility audits of the website on a using WCAG 2.1 AA standards which guide our long-term audit and improvement plans.

What we do about known issues

We work to achieve and maintain WCAG 2.1 AA standards, but it is not always possible for all our content to be accessible. Where content is likely to create a barrier, we will state a reason, warn users and offer alternatives.

• View our known accessibility issues.

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

Our site includes third party content and functionality. 

Depending on our relationship with the third party, we cannot always guarantee its accessibility.  

Links to other websites

Where we link to other websites that may offer benefits to our users we are not responsible for the accessibility of these or any other websites we don't manage.

Using third party content or functionality on our website

We sometimes feature third party content or functionality on our website. This may include:

• applications for creating forms and storing data
• feeds from social media

Where we are legally required to feature third party content or functionality, we cannot reasonably accept responsibility for ensuring it meets accessibility standards. However, where it is within our control, we will make every reasonable effort to work towards meeting accessibility requirements.

Third party platforms

We often create content which is hosted on third party platforms. This includes:

• content we create for social media, such as Facebook or Twitter
• video which we post on YouTube
• data we supply to national databases 

We are responsible for ensuring the content we supply meets accessibility requirements; however, we are not responsible for the accessibility of the platform itself.

For example, when we add video to one of our YouTube channels, we will ensure any subtitling, captions and audio-description are included as required. However, we are not responsible for the accessibility of the video player itself.

Where we use rich media we make sure the media control buttons can be used without a mouse and are labelled for screen readers.

We aim to ensure that all video content has one or more of the following: close-captioning, a transcript or a summary of the key information.

Our website has some downloadable resources including Word documents and Portable Document Formats (PDFs): read about the accessibility of downloadable content.

Please contact us at webcontent@soas.ac.uk if you have any problems; be as specific and detailed as you can. Please also tell us what you like and find useful.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has useful tips on contacting organisations about inaccessible websites.

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 contact us at webcontent@soas.ac.uk to register your difficulty. This helps us improve our systems. 

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).

This page was last updated on 1 November 2022.