Accessibility Statement

This statement applies to Somerville College’s primary website at www.some.ox.ac.uk, as well as our website for applicants https://www.apply.some.ox.ac.uk.

Somerville College is committed to providing an accesible web presence so that members of our college community and the wider public can fully access important information and regulations, news stories, media, and any other content on our website.

Our Equality & Diversity policy contains further detail on our committment to “provide an inclusive environment which values diversity and maintains a working, social and learning environment in which the rights and dignity of all its staff, students and alumni are respected.”

Our aims

In order to ensure that all of our visitors can use our website, these pages aim to meet Level-AA standard of WCAG 2.1. This includes elements such as:

  • Alt text for all images and providing non-visual alternatives where appropriate
  • All essential audiovisual information is captioned, described as necessary or provided in alternative formats
  • Content can be navigated with just a keyboard or speech recognition tools
  • The website can be used with a screen reader
  • Content is structured, ordered and labelled appropriately

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:

How accessible this website is

Our current website is due to upgraded in the coming months. In the meantime, we are aware that some parts of our website are not fully accessible. These include:

  • Low contrast between text and pictures on some headers and footers
  • Some older PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software
  • Some form inputs don’t magnify or zoom appropriately
  • Although all audio on videos is captioned, some multimedia content doesn’t yet have audio or text description
  • You cannot modify the line height or spacing of text

We are working to address areas where our accessibility needs improvement, depending on available resources.

Feedback and alternative formats

If you have any feedback or further questions about content or wish to discuss provision of an alternative format, please contact the webmaster at webmaster@some.ox.ac.uk.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

If you have any questions or concerns about this statement or the accessibility of any of our webpages, please contact the webmaster at webmaster@some.ox.ac.uk.

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).

Other accessibility resources

If you’d like more information about accessibility and resources for students, staff and visitors in Oxford more generally, please visit Oxford University’s Equality and Diversity pages.

If you’re looking for more information on building accessibility in the College, please contact our Disability Co-ordinator Jo Ockwell. If you would like to know about other University buildings, please try the Access Guide or the University’s interactive map.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

As part of our commitments under the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, we are required to publish known issues with our website. Our websites are partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed above under ‘How Accessible This Website Is’.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We want our website to offer the best experience possible for all of our users. We are currently developing a new college website designed to modern accessibility standards. Until this site goes live, we will continue to work on the content, structure and presentation of our existing main site. We continue to improve practices for uploading content to thewebsite.w

Reviews of this accessibility statement

This statement was last reviewed on 7th September 2020.