Accessibility statement for Sandwell.ac.uk
This accessibility statement applies to the Sandwell College website – www.sandwell.ac.uk.
We are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.
We are actively working to increase the accessibility and usability of our website and in doing so adhere to the standards and guidelines
Sandwell College owns www.sandwell.ac.uk The website is hosted and maintained by the College. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
- Zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
- Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
- The College website has installed an accessibility menu widget from Userway.org which provides additional personalisation control for colour contrast, text size, cursor control and other accessibility features. The Userway plugin, which users can enact by clicking the icon in the top right hand corner, will automatically appear unless the user has disabled the feature. This enables you to select a range of options to make the website more accessible, customised to your needs.
We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.
How accessible this website is
What are we doing?
To help us make the Sandwell College website a positive place for everyone, we’ve been using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities, and user friendly for everyone.
The guidelines have three levels of accessibility (A, AA and AAA). We’ve chosen Level A as the starting point for the Sandwell College website.
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
- most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
- live video streams do not have captions
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:
email [email protected]
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.
If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page, call or email us at [email protected] for directions.
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 accessibility requirements, you can report any concerns by emailing [email protected]
How are we doing?
We’ve worked hard on the Sandwell College website and believe we’ve achieved our goal of Level A accessibility. We monitor the website regularly to maintain this, and we are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website.
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, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
COMPLIANCE STATUS
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.
NON-ACCESSIBLE CONTENT
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
NON-COMPLIANCE WITH THE ACCESSIBILITY REGULATIONS
Some PDF documents and videos are not currently fully accessible. By September 2021 we will address any remaining accessibility issues relating to these items.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
PDFs and other documents
Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents.
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. For example, we do not plan to fix (Example- https://www.sandwell.ac.uk/app/uploads/2020/11/Public-Access-to-Corporation-Registers-Oct-2019-Oct-2022.pdf)
Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
Live video
We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Sandwell College 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 2.2 AA standard.
Preparation of this Accessibility Website
This Accessibility Statement was prepared on 11th March 2021. It was last reviewed on 23th October 2024. The website was last tested internally in September 2024.
