Accessibility

Read our Accessibility statement

We Make It Happen.

This accessibility statement applies to https://online.ulster.ac.uk

Ulster University is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Due to the size and complexity of the University’s web presence, this is an ongoing process.

If you have any questions or feedback regarding the accessibility of this site, or if you experience any difficulty using it, please contact the web development manager.
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Using this website

This website is run by Ulster University. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, this 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
  • 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.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you are disabled.

Disability support

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit offers a range of support and advice for staff.

The support available includes:

AccessAbility Service

Our AccessAbility Service offers a wide range of support and advice to disabled students and also to parents, staff and external agencies supporting students.

The support available includes:

How accessible this website is

Some areas of the website may not meet the AA accessibility standard, such as:

  • May experience some issues with pop-ups while zooming due to technical limitations.
  • May experience some issue found with high contrast mode in application forms due to software product issues.
  • Additional asterisk marks may be announced for screen reader users, but this is developed to align with business requirements.
  • Tab key must be used instead of arrow keys for navigation in some screens. This is due to the technical limitations of using links and buttons.
  • Forms may cause some slight issues with accessibility tools which required a ‘selected’ attribute at all times.
  • Open and close arrows used for visual presentation on mobile versions of our course pages may not be fully compatible with some accessibility tools.

Some areas of our Live Chat solution may not meet the AA accessibility standard, such as:

  • Alt text is not available for all elements
  • Information structure is not clear in some instances
  • Some elements have poor colour contrast
  • Some elements are not visible at 400% zoom
  • Keyboard focus is not shown on some elements
  • Some error messages lack clear descriptions
  • Some elements are not compatible with or optimised for screen readers.

There may be other areas we have yet to pick up on as we continue to audit the site. The University is in the process of improving its core web templates to meet AA standards. It has set up an accessibility working group and will be running workshops with devolved editors to promote the importance of accessibility and to make sure standards are adhered to.

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:

• email digital@ulster.ac.uk

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in two days.

If you cannot view the maps on our campus locations pages, please contact us for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re 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 the web development team.

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 Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI).

Technical Information

Ulster University 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 and exemptions 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 the end of December 2021. When we publish new content, we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

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. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2021, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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.

How we tested this website

This website is scanned and tested every day using Funnelback.
The findings from the Funnelback audit are addressed by our Web Development Team on a regular basis.

We used Funnelback to test all pages on this site and also manually reviewed the most commonly visited pages.

We tested:

• our website platform, available at www.online.ulster.ac.uk

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We have a rolling programme of updating content in accordance with the guidelines as set out by the WCAG.

We have been working with our Live Chat software vendor to resolve the accessibility issues which specifically affect this solution. The vendor is aiming to resolve these via a software update in the first half of 2024.

This statement was prepared on 08 April 2021. It was last updated on 19th December 2023.