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Accessibility statement

At the University of Birmingham, we want to ensure that as many people as possible can use our website, and we are working to improve our digital services.

Looking for advice to help you make your event accessible? Read our guide to accessible events with the University of Birmingham.

This accessibility statement covers conferences.bham.ac.uk. We aim to achieve the recommended government standard for web accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA). We also test with users of varied needs and on different assistive devices.

As a user with accessible needs, you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 200% 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 also aim to make the website text 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. We are working on these parts of the site and are committed to producing an accessible site for all users. Those parts with accessibility problems are as follows:

  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • webpages can be navigated by a keyboard, but not all controls show that they have been selected by a keyboard

We will update the statement when issues are fixed or when we expect them to be fixed.

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email [email protected].

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 and are continuing to audit our content. If you find something that you are unable to access, or we have failed to identify a barrier, please let us know.

If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please email [email protected].

Enforcement procedure

If you are unhappy with the response you have received from the University about your accessibility-related issue, you can make a complaint to the University by emailing [email protected].

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

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

This website is fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

Non accessible content

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

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.

Keyboard navigation

Whilst our website supports keyboard navigation, not all controls alter their appearance when selected. For example, a text field should change color, or have a distinctive border applied. We hope to address this issue by Q3 2022.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 12 April 2022. The test was carried out by University staff using a selection of automated tools, which include:

as well as manual checks.

We tested our main website platform, including all venue pages, blog posts and forms available at http://conferences.bham.ac.uk/

This statement was prepared on 12 April 2022. It was last updated on 12 April 2022.