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Accessibility statement for South Eastern Regional College

This statement applies to content published on the www.serc.ac.uk domain.

This website is run by South Eastern Regional College (SERC). We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • use assistive screen technology to navigate and read the website

The website text is as simple as possible to understand. AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is:

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

  • At 400% zoom some pages may have display issues
  • some PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • live video streams do not have captions
  • some images can be on pages using css background styles, these should be decorative only and will not have alt tags.
  • some of our pages contain content from systems provided by an external supplier, such as our ISSUU publishing software and Facebook Messenger chat facility.

Feedback and contact information:

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

We'll consider your request and get back to you in 10 days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We're always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problem not listed on this page or think we're not meeting accessibility requirements, contact:

Enforcement procedure

The Equalities Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the 'accessibility regulations') in Northern Ireland. If you're not happy with how we respond to your complaint, please call ECNI on 028 9050 0600 and ask to speak with one of their Discrimination Advice Officers in their Legal Division, or email information@equalityni.org. Find out more about the enforcement procedure.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

SERC 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

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

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

We plan to add text alternatives for all images by 30th August 2023 when the new website redesign will be complete. All newly published content will meet accessibility standards in the current design.

Some documents contain a non-inline graphic or object. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.2 (meaningful sequence). New documents will meet accessibility guidelines. Older documents will be updated when new versions are created.

Some content does not reflow to fit the page at 400% zoom. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.10 Reflow. We aim to fix the content reflow issue by 30th May 2023.

Some tables included in documents have not been structured appropriately, some PDFs are not tagged to be accessible by screen. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships).

We aim to fix the above issues within documents as they are updated but hope to have them all complete by 30th August 2023

The Facebook chat feature does not allow keyboard navigation. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1 (Keyboard)

The facebook chat feature is contained in an iframe which does not have an accessible name. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value

Facebook chat is a third party feature of the website that cannot be corrected by SERC. We have provided a keyboard only accessible hyperlink has been added to the footer for direct access to facebook messenger to provide the same service. We cannot give the iframe a name. We have raised the issue with facebook.

Disproportionate burden

We are not claiming disproportionate burden for this website.

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

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services.

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.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Live video

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

Maps

We use interactive maps on some pages, we try to make these accessible but alternative information will be provided where possible.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We are continually reviewing the accessibility of our website. This is done through monthly audits using a random sample of pages.

We are currently undergoing a website redesign which will gradually be rolled out as we complete work in stages. We aim to have this work complete by August 2023. We have accessibility checks in place for designers and content creators before any new content goes live on the website.

All SERC staff are assigned mandatory training on how to produce accessible documentation that will be hosted on the website. As new documents are produced or renewed, they will be made accessible.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 30/03/2023. It was last reviewed on 17/04/2023.

This website was last tested on 20/03/2023. We did our own accessibility testing on the website.

We used the following approach when testing the accessibility of the website:

  • Scanning each page with accessibility browser plugins, a mixture of lighthouse and AXE DevTools
  • Manual checks:
    • keyboard navigation
    • browser zoom checks, we checked zoom levels up to 400%
    • colour contrast checks
    • semantic HTML checks
    • content checks, clear and consistent headings and page content

SERC is responsible for implementing accessibility fixes. This statement will be reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis.