Accessibility statement for the University of Edinburgh Business School website (www.business-school.ed.ac.uk)
This statement covers all websites containing .business-school.ed.ac.uk in the URL. The websites are run by the University of Edinburgh Business School.
We want as many people as possible to be able to use our websites. For example, that means 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
- Experience no time limits when using the site
- Not encounter any flashing, scrolling or moving text
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 have a disability.
AbilityNetCustomising our site
You can customise the appearance of our website to make it easier to read and navigate.
Display settings
In order to make our website easier to read and navigate, you can change display settings, such as:
- Text size
- Colour and contrast
- Screen magnification
- Style sheets
Guidance on how to improve accessibility and customise your settings for internet browsers
Our site functions best in modern browsers such as Microsoft Edge (Chromium version), Google Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Edge tends to be the most compatible with assistive software and does not require any plugins. For information on customising your settings, please see the following guidance.
We would not recommend browsing our site using Internet Explorer as Microsoft no longer supports this browser, and it is not capable of loading many of our site features, including our dropdown menus.
How accessible this website is
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
- Some parts may not be fully compatible with screen readers
- You may not be able to access all content by using the keyboard alone
- Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
- Not all media will have a transcript or have human corrected captions
- Some text may not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window and at certain levels of magnification (300%>)
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:
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in five working days.
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 our accessibility requirements, please let us know.
Report an Accessibility Problem
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, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS)
The government has produced information on how to report accessibility issues:
Reporting an accessibility problem on a public sector website
Contacting us by phone using British Sign Language
British Sign Language service
contactSCOTLAND-BSL runs a service for British Sign Language users and all of Scotland's public bodies using video relay. This enables sign language users to contact public bodies and vice versa. The service operates from 8am to 12 midnight, 7 days a week.
contactSCOTLAND-BSL service details
To contact us by other means, please see our contact page to find the appropriate contact number, email, or address:
Technical information about this website's accessibility
The University of Edinburgh Business School 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 partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 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
- Not all our PDFs and Word documents meet accessibility standards
- Not all video will have human corrected captions that identify all speakers as well as noting other significant sounds, e.g. laughter
- Some of our video content uses HTML to format content. Some are embedded in iframes that specify height, width, or other presentational attributes, contrary to WCAG 1.3.1.
- Some headings for subsidiary elements (on-page block links and headings in the footer) use H4 and H5 headings which can appear out of sequence on pages without H3 levels.
1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) (Level AA)
- The WAVE tool identifies low-contrast errors with our social media icons in the header.
- On the 2nd Pitch, Analyst Observatory, Professional Development and SHAW websites, while viewing subpages, the menu item for the current page has a contrast ratio of 3.85:1 instead of the required 4.5:1 at normal text size.
2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context)
- On some pages, the dropdown label destination for the menu conflicts with the breadcrumb or sidebar menu label.
We've assessed the cost of fixing the issue with navigation which conflicts with the navigation menu's expected behaviour. We will make another assessment of these once our website is updated in mid 2025.
We are also aware with an issue with checkboxes on our 'Register Your Interest' and 'Register for a Personal Consultation' forms which means the boxes can only be ticked after pressing tab a second time.
- When using JAWS, when new content is loaded the refocus does not automatically refocus. The user instead needs to press the down arrow for JAWS to read the new content.
We aim to improve the accessibility of our websites on a regular and continuous basis. See the section below ('What we're doing to improve accessibility') on how we are improving our site accessibility.
We are working towards solving these problems and expect significant improvements by February 2025. The site is fully within our control.
Additional issues to review
Following a manual accessibility audit of a Business School site in May 2022, additional issues were flagged that will require review from the Web Team. These consist of:
- Review behaviour of white logos when user preferences set backgrounds to white
- Ensure additional warnings appear for all links opening in new tabs or windows, or refactor links to open in same tab where appropriate
- Review alt text for news article image links, particularly where these appear alongside text links to the same resource
- Configure display at 300% zoom and above; some elements are cropped/lost in banners when zooming above this level
- Improve compatibility with JAWS across all browsers
- Improve compatibility with mobile device accessibility options
- Review use of italicisation
The Virtual Visit application
We link to a virtual tour from some of our Student Life pages. The accessibility statement for this application is linked below, and we are in discussions with the creators, Luma 3D Interactive Ltd, to resolve outstanding accessibility issues.
Disproportionate burden
We are not currently claiming that any accessibility problems would be a disproportionate burden to fix.
Content that's not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
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).
While the majority of our PDFs and Word documents contain information available elsewhere on the website (e.g. Programme Brochures), we do have some material in PDF/Word document format that are used for informational, archival, and/or submission purposes.
We are in discussions with teams regarding the viability of PDFs and Word documents as featured on our website, and are working to minimise the number of these on our website and/or make them available in another accessible format.
However, 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.
Going forward, we will try to ensure any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards and where we find any that are not accessible we will try to rectify this as soon as possible.
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
We will continue to address and make improvements to the accessibility issues highlighted. Unless specified otherwise, a complete solution or significant improvement will be in place by mid 2025.
While we are in the process of resolving these accessibility issues we will ensure reasonable adjustments are in place to make sure no user is disadvantaged. As changes are made, we will continue to review accessibility and retest the accessibility of this website.
As noted above, it may not be possible to resolve all accessibility issues. However, while we are in the process of resolving these accessibility issues, or where we are unable, we will ensure reasonable adjustments are in place to make sure no user is disadvantaged. As changes are made, we will continue to review accessibility and retest the accessibility of our websites and applications.
- We will continue to address the accessibility issues highlighted to deliver a solution or suitable workaround.
- Accessibility scans run automatically every 7 days on Little Forest, meaning we have up-to-date information on any new accessibility issues that may arise from week to week
- A limited number of users have access to edit our site. Therefore, we have minimised the opportunity for non-accessible content to be uploaded going forward
- We are participating in initiatives led by the University of Edinburgh to promote awareness of and compliance with accessibility legislation in order to benefit the users of our websites
View a list of our accessibility improvements
How we tested this website
This website was last tested in May 2022. The test was carried out by the Business School Web Team using a combination of automated tools (Little Forest and WAVE, the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool), and manual accessibility testing on a representative sample of pages within the SBIA subsite.
In addition to annual manual accessibility testing, Little Forest is used to automatically assess our websites for accessibility and we check these reports for any new errors once a week. This currently only encompasses some of our sites; in the future we hope to include all our subsites in this automated testing. If new issues are identified, we manually prioritise these issues, taking into account the scope of the issue and its relative time to resolve and add them to the accessibility statement (or, if possible, resolve the issue immediately).
This statement was prepared on 4 October 2019. It was last updated on 1 July 2024.