Noteable - Accessibility Statement for the main website of the Noteable service

⤺ accessibility

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

This accessibility statement applies to the Noteable website (https://noteable.edina.ac.uk). Parallel statements are available for the service, Moodle, and StatusPage.

This application is run by EDINA, for the University of Edinburgh. Our aim is for as many people as possible to be able to use this website. That means you should be able to:

• 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)
• understand the content of the application
• access and use the website without any time limits
• zoom in up to 500% without the text spilling off the screen
• zoom in and out while using the application
• change colours, contrast levels and fonts using your browser settings

Customising the application

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:

Additional information on how to customise our website appearance

How accessible this application is

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

• some parts may not be fully compatible with screen readers (such as the Notebook Document pages)
• sometimes it can be hard to tell where you have navigated to using only the keyboard
• some non-text content does not have text alternatives
• some website features include pop-up windows. User are notified through the cursor changing to a hand-click icon when hovering over links which will open a new tab or window
• there may be some use of block italics and text over a background that changes colour
• Noteable is not primarily designed to be used on devices with particularly small screens smaller than 10 inches (such as a smartphone)
• some backgrounds change colour, with the user unable to pause or stop
• magnification beyond 200% may lead to reflow issues, where horizontal scrolling is necessary to see all content
• not all colour contrasts meet the recommended Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard
• some images may fail colour contrast guidelines if users redefine the colour palette in their browser

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website or the Noteable website in a different format such as an accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

• email edina@ed.ac.uk
• call us on 0131 650 3302
• British Sign Language (BSL) users can contact us via Contact SCOTLAND BSL, the on-line BSL interpreting service

We will consider your request and get back to you within 5 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this application

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

• email us at edina@ed.ac.uk
• call us on 0131 650 3302
• British Sign Language (BSL) users can contact us via Contact SCOTLAND BSL, the online BSL interpreting service

We will consider your report and get back to you within 5 working days.

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 UK government has also 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

Contact SCOTLAND 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 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Technical information about this application's accessibility

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

Compliance status

This application is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard, owing to the non-compliances listed below.

Non accessible content

The website has non-compliance issues noted below.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

The following items to not comply with the WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria:

• 1.1.1 - Non-text Content
  • The external StatusPage service provides a pop-up for alerts and outages. This is hidden via aria, and by placing the content outside the window. The content is only in the "Tabbing Order" if the alert is enabled
• 2.4.1 - Bypass Blocks
  • The module that provides the status pop-up is missing a title attribute, thus some Screen Readers cannot label it
• 2.4.7 - Focus Visible
  • The list of selectable notebooks on the /launch does not honour the outline marker, making it less clear where you are in the page
• 3.2.2 - On Input
  • The website has a pop-up to allow users to opt out of our Google Analytics tracking. This appears automatically
  • The launch page provides a guided tour of the launch page the first time you visit. This appears automatically

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

At this time, we do not believe that any of our content is outside the scope of the accessibility regulations.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

The Noteable website team will constantly review and, where possible, improve accessibility for this website. We will continue to address the accessibility issues highlighted, working to deliver a solution or suitable workaround for users to use the website. Unless specified otherwise, a complete solution or significant improvement will be in place for those items within our control by December 2023.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was initially created on the 20th October 2021. It was last reviewed on 5th April 2023.

Testing

The content was last reviewed and tested April 2023.

This website was tested by the Noteable website team within the Information Services Group directorate. The testing was carried out primarily using a combination of Firefox, Google Chrome, & Microsoft Edge browsers on a Linux system; with MacOS (Firefox, Google Chrome, & Safari) and Windows 10 (Firefox, Google Chrome, & Microsoft Edge) also used for comparative purposes, including screen reader compatibility. Lynx was used to test text-only navigation for the main website (but not the notebooks). In particular, the website was tested using Chrome on multiple platforms since it is by far the most popular browser when using a screen reader and the most popular browser when using the Noteable website. Current worldwide usage levels for different screen readers and browsers can be found in the May-June 2021 WebAIM annual survey.

Automated testing

We try to be consistent with automated testing across all components in the Noteable service.

A representative sample of pages were chosen to cover the different types of content and presentation within the website.

We used a range of toolkits and services to check each page:

• The IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker is an open source tool for web developers and auditors that utilizes IBM's accessibility rule engine, which detects accessibility issues for web pages and web applications
• The Google Chrome Lighthouse DevTool is an open-source, automated tool for improving the quality of web pages. It has audits for performance, accessibility, best practice, progressive web apps, SEO and more
• The WAVE® Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool from WebAIM is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities
• The Accessibility tree viewer from the Firefox Developer Tools extension

We recognise the limitations of automated testing and we supplemented this with manual testing.

Manual Testing

Basic manual testing is viewing each page in a variety of browser/Operating System.

Content across the Noteable website has been tested without a mouse through keyboard navigation and has been found to be accessible using a keyboard interface. Note that the Jupyter and RStudio applications generally "tab" to navigate between sections, and "arrow key" within menus.

Using Windows 10 [Home Edition], We

• visually compared pages using Firefox, Chrome, and Edge
• tested pages using NVDA screen reader in Chrome and Edge (again, noting that the Jupyter and RStudio interfaces are complicated apps for a Screen Reader to address)
• tested pages using the Windows magnifier tool

Using MacOS X [Big Sur], we

• visually compared pages using Firefox, Chrome, and Safari
• tested pages isung the built-in voiceOver screen reader (again, noting that the Jupyter and RStudio interfaces are complicated apps for a Screen Reader to address)

Using Linux [Ubuntu 20:04 LTS], we visually compared all pages using Firefox and Chrome.

We also tested for the following:

• spellcheck functionality
• scaling using different resolutions from –25% to +500%
• options to customise the interface (magnification, font, background colour et. cetera)
• notice of links to new window or tab when navigating the website
• information conveyed in colour or sound only
• flashing or scrolling text
• time limits

Our findings on these features are summarised above.

Changes since the previous statement

November 2022

We addressed the reflow issue on the main website.

There were a number of small improvements throughout the service.

Accessibility testing was expanded to include more components within the overall service.

The single accessibility statement was broken down into a number of focused statements, each focused on a specialist component.

April 2023

The way documentation was provided has been changed.

There were an array of iterative improvements throughout the service, mostly addressing the semantics and aria labeling of sections.

The notebook-descriptions page was retired, which was the only page that used ToolTips