Accessibility

Accessibility statement.

We are committed to making this website, and the websites listed below, as accessible as possible. By this we mean making sure that our content is available to users with physical or sensory impairments and who use assistive technology like screen readers and to those users with slower internet connections.
www.the-etc.ac.uk
www.stockton.ac.uk
www.cleveland.ac.uk
www.bede.ac.uk
www.neta.co.uk
www.skillsacademybillingham.ac.uk
Also, SharePoint Online, which is used by us for internal applications including our Intranet and Virtual Learning Environment.

Content Management Systems used by ETC are:
Umbraco (view Umbraco’s accessibility information here)
WordPress (view WordPress’s accessibility statement here)

We strive to be accessible

This website is owned by the Education Training Collective. 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.

Accessibility tools

Every effort is made to ensure that Etc. websites are accessible across all platforms and browsers. We would strongly recommend, however, that you upgrade your browser to the latest version for optimum experience. AbilityNet also has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

Website accessibility statement in line with Public Sector Body (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

This accessibility statement applies to the collection of SharePoint sites used by the Education Training Collective. SharePoint Online is a third party, web-based piece of software on which we use and host ‘internal’ content. SharePoint Online is supplied by Microsoft and they have published information on the accessibility of SharePoint

The collection of SharePoint Online (both Intranet and Virtual Learning Environment) sites is administered by the IT Services team within the Group, but each site is managed and maintained by separate site owners who take responsibility for the accessibility of their own sites. SharePoint Online at Etc is accessed by logging into Office 365 using a network login.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use SharePoint. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • using your browser settings 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
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of Job Access with Speech (JAWS), NonVisual Desktop Access (NVDA) and VoiceOver). Microsoft have produced specific guidance on using SharePoint with a screen reader Advice on using a Screen Reader with SharePoint
  • use SharePoint and the websites even if JavaScript is turned off

If you’re interested in making the most out of SharePoint’s Accessibility features, visit this link:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/accessibility-features-in-sharepoint-online

We’ve made the website text as simple as possible to understand. However, some of our content may be technical, and we use technical terms where there is no easier wording we could use without changing what the text means.

Customising the website

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. This is an external site with suggestions to make your computer more accessible: AbilityNet – My Computer My Way

With a few simple steps you can customise the appearance of our website using your browser settings to make it easier to read and navigate. Here is some advice from the World Wide Web Consortium on how to do this.

How accessible this website is

Contrast
The free text on our pages conform to WCAG 2.1 AA and AAA in relation to contrast compliance for regular and large text.

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

  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most of our PDFs are hosted on www.issuu.com and may not be fully accessible to screen reader software
  • some of our videos do not have captions
  • some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • this website has ‘skip to content’ functions, but our other websites do not (when using a screen reader).
  • depending on users’ choice of browser, the TabIndex property may not be available on all forms in scope.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format, including accessible PDF, large print, audio recording or braille please contact the Information Services Helpline

  • Email: info@stockton.ac.uk
  • Telephone +44 (0)1642 865 400

We’ll consider your request and get back to you as soon as possible.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website and our SharePoint sites. If you find any problems not listed on this page, or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact:

  • Email: data@stockton.ac.uk
  • Telephone +44 (0)1642 865 400

We’ll consider your request and get back to you as soon as possible.

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) directly:
Contact details for the 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

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Education Training Collective is committed to making its websites and applications accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This website, our other websites listed above and our SharePoint sites are partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

The full guidelines are available at:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard

Here’s a technical breakdown of the compliant elements of this site.

General
Uses HTTPS
Redirects HTTP traffic to HTTPS
Avoids deprecated APIs
Avoids third-party cookies
Allows users to paste into input fields
Avoids requesting the geolocation permission on page load
Avoids requesting the notification permission on page load
Displays images with correct aspect ratio
Serves images with appropriate resolution
Page has the HTML doctype
Properly defines charset
Links have a discernible name
Button, link, and menu item elements have accessible names
Image elements have [alt] attributes
Background and foreground colours have a sufficient contrast ratio
Document has a <title> element
Touch targets have sufficient size and spacing.
Heading elements appear in a sequentially-descending order
Image elements do not have [alt] attributes that are redundant text.
Elements with No form fields have multiple labels
Input buttons have discernible text.
Form elements have associated labels
Links are distinguishable without relying on colour.
Select elements have associated label elements.
Skip links are focusable.
Tables have different content in the summary attribute and <caption>
Document uses legible font sizes

Non accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons. We know some parts of SharePoint Online at Etc aren’t fully accessible, and the complexity and volume of content available presents difficulties in identifying all accessibility issues. Users may experience issues depending on the area they are accessing. For example:

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Please refer to the Accessibility Score rating at the bottom of the page. We are actively involved in fixing as many of these issues as soon as possible.

Disproportionate burden

We are not currently claiming that any accessibility problems would be a disproportionate burden to fix. However, because we use a content management system for the publication of our content (websites and SharePoint), some issues can only be fixed by the developers of those applications and compliance would be out of our control.

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

PDFs

Many of our older PDFs are not fully accessible, for example, and they may not be easy to view using a screen reader. 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 we publish are published on www.issuu.com. Their accessibility statement is here.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations. An example of this would be if we ran live webinars for campus Open Events, etc.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We will continue to address the accessibility issues highlighted, alongside working to deliver a solution or suitable workaround. Unless specified otherwise, a complete solution or significant improvement will be in place for those items within our control as soon as possible. Some of our PDFs (moving to Issue.com) and Word documents are essential to providing our services. Our intention is to make as much of our website and internal documents as accessible as possible and we are committed, where possible and required, to an overhaul of these items as soon as possible.

While we are in the process of resolving these accessibility issues, or where we are unable to, 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. We intend to do further manual testing across the Group’s SharePoint estate and curriculum resources and update this statement accordingly.

Staff development programmes are in place to support staff in planning, designing, developing and delivering more accessible content.

The IT Services team follows guidance from Microsoft on how to make SharePoint online accessible to all. We are committed to improving accessibility for our SharePoint online community. Activities include:

  1. Accessibility and inclusion being actively discussed throughout the Group, with an internal group actively dedicated to developing our accessibility awareness and producing advice and guidance for all staff and students on developing and accessing our compliant content.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was initiated on 15th October 2020. It was last reviewed and updated on 25th September 2024.

This website was last tested on 24th September 2024. The test was carried out by Etc staff. We tested using a third party test service which measures against WCAG Guidelines.

Results:

1 Contrast Error, which we are looking into.

Our improvement work is ongoing. We intend to do further manual testing across the Group’s web pages and SharePoint Online sites over the coarse of this academic year (2024-2025). When all or elements of this work is complete, we will update this statement.