Web accessibility

This statement applies to content published on the Thomas Ashton Institute website at www.ashtoninstitute.ac.uk.

Other websites that also belong to The University of Manchester and use manchester.ac.uk sub-domains are managed locally and will publish separate statements with information relevant to them. These include websites of our academic Schools and research institutes, among others.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use our website and we are continually working towards improving its accessibility. We follow general principles of usability and universal design, and endeavour to meet level 2 (AA) of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.

Our website will allow you to:

zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen;
navigate most of the website using just a keyboard or speech recognition tools;
listen to most of the website using a screen reader;
view essential audio-visual information (captions or transcriptions are provided in most cases).

How accessible this website is

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

some PDF documents may not be fully accessible to screen reader software;
some audio or video content may not have transcripts, captions or audio descriptions;
some embedded content from third-party providers may not be fully accessible;
some images may not have alt text or may have irrelevant alt text.

Please see the Technical Information section below for more detailed information on known accessibility issues.

Making changes to your device

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

Also, the University’s Disability Advisory and Support Service (DASS) website offers up-to-date information for prospective students and staff with specific learning difficulties, disabilities, sensory impairments, mental health difficulties and medical conditions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

Please email fsemarketing@manchester.ac.uk if you have an accessibility query (including about content not within the scope of the accessibility regulation), identify any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements. Please provide the web address (URL) of the page(s) in which you find the problem, a description of the issue and your name. We will consider your request and get back to you within ten working days.

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 please let us know. If you remain unsatisfied, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

At The University of Manchester, we're are committed to making our 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 WCAG 2.1 AA standard, due to the instances of non-compliance and exceptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Issues with navigation, text and images

Some images, which may need a description, do not have any alt text, and some decorative images have irrelevant alt text which should be blank, so people using a screen reader cannot access the required information (WCAG: 1.1.1).
Some non-HTML documents (such as PDF documents) may not be accessible and therefore their content will not be available via screen-readers (WCAG: 4.1.2).

Issues with video and audio

Some audio content (such as podcasts) does not have transcripts (WCAG: 1.2.1).
Some videos with audio do not have captions or transcriptions, or use auto-generated captions which may be innacurate (WCAG: 1.2.2).
Some videos without audio that ideally should have audio descriptions do not have this (WCAG: 1.2.5).

We are actively working to fix these issues and improve the way we create web content to ensure our websites are as accessible as possible.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

PDF documents before 23 September 2018 may not be fully accessible.

Maps

Our website has online maps which are unlikely to be fully accessible because of the assistive technologies used in their development. An alternative format is provided in most circumstances. For example, links to PDF files are added in our maps and travel page.

Third party-content

Our site uses third-party content which may not be fully accessible. This includes content we publish on social media channels such as Twitter or You Tube. We are responsible for ensuring the accessibility of the content we produce, however we have no control over the accessibility of these platforms.

How we tested this website

This website is scanned automatically every seven days using an external service. The scan report highlights any content that is not compliant with WCAG 2.1.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We have an ongoing programme of work to address any accessibility issues that are highlighted by our weekly scans. We are continually working on our content and site structure, and finding ways to make the site more intuitive and easy to navigate. We are developing guidelines on how to create accessible content to help those colleagues working on other University websites.

This statement was first published on 09/04/2021 and last reviewed and updated on 08/02/2023.