Accessibility report for www.howcollege.ac.uk
Introduction
Website accessibility regulations came into force on 23 September 2018. The regulations mean that public sector bodies now have a legal obligation to meet accessibility requirements for their websites.
To check how well the public sector are meeting the requirements, the Government Digital Service (part of the Cabinet Office) has been monitoring a sample of public sector websites.
You’ve been sent this report because https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/ is one of the websites we’ve monitored. This document explains:
- which parts of your website we looked at
- how we checked the accessibility of those pages
- the accessibility issues found and how important they are
- what you need to do next to fix the issues
You can read more about the web accessibility regulations.
How accessible the website is
We checked https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/ on 25 October 2022 against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard.
Based on our testing, this site is partially compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA. This means there are some things which are not fully accessible.
How we checked
We use a mixture of simple manual checks and automated tests to find only the most common barriers to users with accessibility needs. We would expect your organisation to fully audit the website to find any other accessibility issues.
Manual checks included using each page without a mouse, viewing the page at different zoom settings, and simulating viewing the page on a small screen.
The automated tests were completed using the latest version of Axe.
Tests were completed using different settings in the Google Chrome browser on Mac OSX with a 13 inch screen.
Pages we checked
| Page Name | URL |
|---|---|
Home |
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Contact |
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Accessibility statement |
https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/about/legal/accessibility-statement/ |
Latest News |
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About |
|
Audit Committee Meeting To be held on Tuesday 30 November 2021 at 17:30 |
https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/media/3573/agenda-audit-committee-30-november-2021.pdf |
The issues we found
Only serious accessibility issues on the sample of pages we tested are listed in this report – these will cause problems for users with access needs when using your website. There are likely to be smaller errors which will make things more difficult for some users. You must carry out your own audit to find and fix issues on other pages.
Home page issues
| # | Issue and description | Where the issue was found |
|---|---|---|
| Issue:1 |
Poor colour contrast makes it difficult for someone with sight loss to see the content properly. If there is a big difference between the background and foreground colours it should be much easier to see the difference between them. |
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| Issue:2 |
Users should be able to use a keyboard to access all content and functionality of a web page. This means the page can be used by people with no vision as well as people who use alternative keyboards or input devices that act as a keyboard. |
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| Issue:3 |
A visible focus helps users know which element has keyboard focus and where they are on the page. When an element gets focus there should be a visible border around it. Highlighting the element that has keyboard focus or is hovered over can provide information like whether the element is interactive or the scope of that element. Operating systems have a native indication of focus, which is available in many browsers. The default display of the focus indicator is not always highly visible and may even be difficult to see especially on coloured backgrounds. |
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| Issue:4 |
Images of text cause problems for users who need to adjust how visual content like font size, spacing or colours are displayed. The image quality can reduce and become blurry when users increase page magnification. Images of text should not be used unless text cannot be formatted to the same effect, for example logos or branding. Text may be used in images where the text is part of an image that contains a lot of other visual content like graphs or diagrams that give important information through more than just text. |
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| Issue:5 |
Content that moves, flashes or updates automatically can be a severe distraction for certain users, making it difficult to use the page. It can also cause problems for assistive technologies like screen readers. For any moving, flashing or scrolling information that:
there should be a way for the user to pause, stop or hide it, unless it is part of an essential activity. There must be a method to allow the user to pause, stop, hide or control the frequency for content that automatically begins ‘auto-updating’ in parallel with other content unless it is essential to an activity. |
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| Issue:6 | WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content: Images must have alternate text. Issue found using Deque Axe. People with sight loss may not be able to see an image clearly on a page. Text alternatives can be used by screen readers to share the same information a sighted user would get from the image. The alternative text must describe the information or function represented by the image. Alternatives or alt attributes must be used for items such as:
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| Issue:7 | WCAG 4.1.1 Parsing: IDs used in ARIA and labels must be unique. Issue found using Deque Axe. Using unique IDs helps to identify each element and can prevent invalid markup. When the same value has been used for two or more ID attributes or labels, assistive technologies may skip over the second instance or be unable to recognise a difference between the two elements causing misinterpretations of content or functionality for users. |
Element Location; input[placeholder="Search the site..."]
To solve this problem, you need to fix the following:Document has active elements with the same id attribute: query.
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Contact page issues
https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/contact-us/
| # | Issue and description | Where the issue was found |
|---|---|---|
| Issue:1 |
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| Issue:2 |
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| Issue:3 |
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| Issue:4 | WCAG 2.4.1 Bypass Blocks and WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value: Frames must have an accessible name. Issue found using Deque Axe. A frame title describes the content of the frame. Screen readers can understand this and help users move through frame elements quickly by using an option to select a list of titles for all frames on the page. A descriptive, meaningful and unique title allows users to find the frame they need. Ensure all frame and iframe elements have useful <title> attribute values. |
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| Issue:5 | WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value: ARIA button, link, and menuitem must have an accessible name. Issue found using Deque Axe. ARIA components such as buttons, input fields, toggle fields and tooltips must have an accessible name that details the purpose. This gives context to assistive technology users and ensures custom elements are read correctly. Accessible names should be added to elements with the following roles: button, checkbox, combobox, link, listbox, menu, menuitem, radio, searchbox and tooltip. |
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Accessibility statement page issues
https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/about/legal/accessibility-statement/
| # | Issue and description | Where the issue was found |
|---|---|---|
| Issue:1 |
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| Issue:2 |
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| Issue:3 |
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Latest News page issues
https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/latest-news/
| # | Issue and description | Where the issue was found |
|---|---|---|
| Issue:1 |
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| Issue:2 |
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| Issue:3 |
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About page issues
https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/about/
| # | Issue and description | Where the issue was found |
|---|---|---|
| Issue:1 |
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| Issue:2 |
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| Issue:3 |
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| Issue:4 | WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content: Images must have alternate text. |
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Audit Committee Meeting To be held on Tuesday 30 November 2021 at 17:30 issues
https://www.howcollege.ac.uk/media/3573/agenda-audit-committee-30-november-2021.pdf
| # | Issue and description | Where the issue was found |
|---|---|---|
| Issue:1 |
PDF documents should have titles that describe the topic or purpose of the page. Titles help users understand the topic without having to read the entire document. Without a descriptive title a user may need to spend time searching the document to decide whether the content is relevant. When a PDF is displayed in a browser the title will usually be displayed in the top title bar or as the tab name. |
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| Issue:2 | WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships: In tables. Information in tables must be shown in a way that maintains the relationships between the data even when a user cannot see the table. Assistive technologies like screen readers rely on correct markup within a table to understand and show the correct information to a user. Tables in PDF documents should be tagged to give information such as row and column titles. |
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Your accessibility statement
As part of the regulations you must publish an accessibility statement.
An accessibility statement for the website was found but:
- accessibility issues were found during the test that were not included in the statement
More information about accessibility statements can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accessibility-requirements-for-public-sector-websites-and-apps.
A sample statement can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sample-accessibility-statement.
What to do next
It is a requirement of The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 that public sector websites are accessible.
You should fix the issues that were found and do your own accessibility audit to check for issues that go beyond the scope of simple accessibility testing.
You need to review your accessibility statement to cover the issues found in this report, including ones related to your accessibility statement, and any other accessibility issues found during your own site audit.
Enforcement
On behalf of the Minister for the Cabinet Office we provide the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) with details about public sector bodies who have been monitored. If accessibility issues remain after giving you time to fix them, the EHRC may take further action.
Public sector bodies must publish an accessibility statement and review it regularly. If the decision is taken that a public sector body has failed to publish an accessibility statement or that the accessibility statement is incorrect, the Minister for the Cabinet Office may publish the name of the body and a copy of the decision.
The enforcement process can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accessibility-requirements-for-public-sector-websites-and-apps#how-the-accessibility-regulations-will-be-monitored-and-enforced.
Contact and more information
This test was conducted by the Government Digital Service on behalf of the Minister of the Cabinet Office as part of their obligations to monitor the accessibility of public sector websites in the United Kingdom.
As the monitoring body we cannot offer specific advice on approaches or general accessibility queries other than questions directly related to the items in this report.
Any questions about this report can be sent to accessibility-monitoring@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk.
Further information on guidance and tools for digital accessibility can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/guidance-and-tools-for-digital-accessibility.
Help with accessibility auditing and publishing an accessibility statement can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/make-your-website-or-app-accessible-and-publish-an-accessibility-statement.