Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to the student portal website: https://students.solent.ac.uk.

This website is run by Solent University. 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 300% without the text spilling off the screen
• Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
• Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
• Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver.

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

How accessible this website is

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

• You cannot change colours, contrast levels and font sizes on the page, but you may be able to do this from your browser.
• You cannot modify the line height or spacing of text.
• Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software.
• Some videos may not have captions.
• Some sections of our website may be difficult to navigate using just a keyboard.
• Some links may have the same name.
• A screen reader may not fully work, or may be confusing, on sections of the website.

Feedback and contact information

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of the student portal website. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers on the student portal website:

• Phone: 023 8201 3000
• Email: webrequests@solent.ac.uk
• Visitor address: Solent University, East Park Terrace, Southampton, SO14 0YN
• Postal address: Solent University, East Park Terrace, Southampton, SO14 0YN

We try to respond to feedback within three working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: webrequests@solent.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).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Solent University is committed to making its websites 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 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of Solent University websites, there may be some limitations. Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.

1. HTML is used to format content: Presentational attributes such as ‘border’, ‘align’ or ‘bgcolor’ are used. CSS should be used for styling instead.
   
   We are in the process of reviewing the entire website to ensure all areas area accessible.
   
   
2. iFrame is missing a title: The iFrame has no 'title' attribute or the 'title' attribute is empty. Some iFrames have been added to the website without a title being added by the editor.
   
   We are in the process of reviewing the entire website to ensure all areas are accessible. 
   
   
3. Colour contrast is insufficient: The colour of the text and the colour of the background are not in sufficient contrast to each other.
   
   We are in the process of reviewing the entire website to ensure all areas are accessible.
   
   
4. Heading is missing text: An empty heading occurs.
   
   We are in the process of reviewing the entire website to ensure all areas are accessible.
   
   
5. Local link destination does not exist: A local link (anchor link) occurs but the destination does not exist.
   
   We are in the process of reviewing the entire website to ensure all areas are accessible.

If you encounter any of these issues please contact webrequests@solent.ac.uk for further support and information.

Disproportionate burden

PDFs and other documents
While every effort has been made to ensure pdf documents retain some consistency by providing templates, pdf documents are created, edited and uploaded to the website by a number of different members of staff. The resource within the team which manages the University’s websites is such that it would not be possible to thoroughly and manually check each document and its iterations uploaded to the website. The nature of many of these documents also means that most of them cannot be turned into HTML pages.

Content that’s 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’re not essential to providing our services.

Live video
We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are reviewing all the University’s websites to identify where we plan to improve accessibility. Requirement to meet accessibility standards has been written into our ‘definition of done’ for all work undertaken on our websites.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 3 November 2020. It was last reviewed on 3 November 2020.

This website is tested each week as we continually monitor the accessibility level of this website using software called Site Improve. During our design and development processes we use third party add-ons to test the accessibility of the designs and components we create.