The Library
Accessibility
Accessibility statement for Warwick Research Archive Portal
EPrints open source software
This repository web application uses the open source software EPrints version 3.3.10 and has been customised for our own requirements and branding. The parts of EPrints which are not fully accessible prior to these customisations can be found in a list provided on the central EPrints.org accessibility information page (https://www.eprints.org/uk/index.php/software/accessibility/how-accessible-eprints-is/).
The accessibility roadmap for EPrints.org is at: https://www.eprints.org/uk/index.php/software/accessibility/roadmap/
This is the accessibility statement for the Warwick Research Archive Portal.
Warwick Research Archive Portal is operated by the University of Warwick Library on behalf of the University of Warwick. We want all people to be able to use Warwick Research Archive Portal. For example, this 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 aim to make the website text as simple as possible to understand and provided help text where possible.
AbilityNet has advice on making your electronic device easier to use if you have a disability.
How accessible Warwick Research Archive Portal is
We know some parts of Warwick Research Archive Portal are not fully accessible:
most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
the search pages do not have labels for some form elements
when logged-in, some of the deposit workflow form elements do not have labels
Using the WAVE Accessibility tool we are also aware of alerts that it raises which cannot be resolved:
Empty listing of items displays No Items in the middle of the table that WAVE thinks should be a table caption. This is not appropriate, and displaying a row with the text ‘No Items’, makes it clear there are no items, whereas no rows at all might make it look as though something has broken.
Links to PDF documents. The purpose of a repository is to store PDF content.
Feedback and contact information
What to do if you find parts of Warwick Research Archive Portal not accessible
If you need information on this website in a different format, please contact us. You can contact us by email at: disability@warwick.ac.uk
Reporting accessibility problems with Warwick Research Archive Portal
We are always looking to improve the accessibility of Warwick Research Archive Portal. If you find any issues not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, please email: disability@warwick.ac.uk.
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 are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
Technical information about Warwick Research Archive Portal’s accessibility
University of Warwick is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
Compliance status
This website is not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. The non-compliances and exemptions are listed below.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
Accessibility Report
Home page:
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/index.html
Errors
Missing alternative text
Linked image missing alternative text
Missing form label
Language missing or invalid
Language missing or invalid
Empty link
Contrast Errors
Alerts
No page regions
Skipped heading level
Redundant link
Device dependent event handler
Accesskey
Very small text
Record page:
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/115327/
Errors
Contrast Errors
Alerts
Select missing label
No page regions
Skipped heading level
Possible table caption
Redundant link
Link to PDF document
Device dependent event handler
Accesskey
Very small text
Redundant title text
Layout table
Search page:
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/cgi/search/publications_advanced
Errors
Missing alternative text
Linked image missing alternative text
Missing form label
Language missing or invalid
Empty link
Contrast Errors
Alerts
Select missing label
Missing fieldset
No page regions
Skipped heading level
**Suspicious link text [** false positive]
Redundant link
Device dependent event handler
Accesskey
Layout table
Browse by Department:
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/view/publications_divisions/
Errors
Missing alternative text
Linked image missing alternative text
Missing form label
Language missing or invalid
Empty link
Contrast Errors
Alerts
Select missing label
No page regions
Skipped heading level
Suspicious link text
Redundant link
Device dependent event handler
Accesskey
Deposit route:
https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/cgi/users/home?eprintid=81375&screen=EPrint::Edit&stage=core#publication
Errors
Missing alternative text
Linked image missing alternative text
Missing form label
Language missing or invalid
Empty link
Empty table header
Contrast Errors
Alerts
Select missing label
More information
A nearby image has the same alternative text
Missing fieldset
No page regions
Skipped heading level
Redundant link
Device dependent event handler
Accesskey
Very small text
Layout table
Disproportionate burden
Warwick Research Archive Portal is a repository that contains user-provided and third-party content. Increasingly new content will be compliant with accessibility regulations, but some new content (and a large proportion of the older content that is not within scope of the accessibility regulations) will not be. Identifying all non-compliant content and making it compliant is a disproportionate burden at this time, as the focus on this would prevent us delivering the wider repository service effectively. We will continue to review systems and processes to further accessibility. We will also provide a statement explaining that user-provided content may not comply with accessibility regulations, and how to request accessible versions.
Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
PDFs and other documents
As Warwick Research Archive Portal is an open access research repository, the principal content made available to users are user- and third-party provided research outputs such as journal articles, conference papers and research reports - many of which are PDF documents. Older PDF documents are often not fully accessible to screen reader software and do not contain other common accessibility features. In particular:
many documents, especially older ones, do not conform to the PDF/A archiving format.
many lack bookmarks or document titles, therefore failing to meet WCAG 2.1 success criteria 2.4.5 and 2.4.2.
many discuss scientific or scholarly concepts which may be abbreviated with no mechanism for discovering the meaning of the abbreviations, or unusual words arising from scholarly discourse without definitions. These issues each fail WCAG 2.1 criteria 3.1.4 and 3.1.1 respectively.
there may be some documents that fail to specify their human language, thereby failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.1.1.
many documents may not reflow satisfactorily. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.10.
The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents placed in Warwick Research Archive Portal's archive before 23 September 2018 as these items are considered ‘archives’.
PDFs and other documents added after 23 September 2018 are user provided by third parties and therefore may not be fully accessible. Warwick Research Archive Portal identifies this possibility in making content available for download.
General issues
The Warwick Research Archive Portal website itself demonstrates good levels of accessibility. However, the following issues have been identified and are in the process of being addressed:
Headings on some of our pages do not appear in a logical order. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.10.
Some of the forms and interactive search pages on Warwick Research Archive Portal are not appropriately labelled or do not have labels. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.3.2.
Interactive elements of Warwick Research Archive Portal (such as search) do not utilise status messages to update screen readers of a change in state. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.2.2
How we tested Warwick Research Archive Portal
Warwick Research Archive Portal was last tested on 15 June 2022 with the WAVE Evaluation Tool (version 3.16).
Warwick Research Archive Portal is currently running on a legacy version of EPrints. Our testing produced several alerts that are considered acceptable and/or essential for the functioning of EPrints as on Open Access repository as the fall into one of the following categories:
Links to PDF documents.
Duplications in the test or third-party data leading to alerts about shared alternative texts for nearby images.
False positive reports of suspicious link texts that is not suspicious within the context of where they appear.
Apparent missing table captions due to a feature in EPrints to make clear a table has no items rather than leaving it blank that might lead to an assumption that something is broken.
Technical pages like those for Open Archives Initiative metadata harvesting have been tested and found to have issues with tables being reported as being used for layout when they are used as tables, and as these pages are not generally intended for machine and not human use, it is not intended to do prioritise these.
What we are doing to improve accessibility
We continue to review the accessibility of Warwick Research Archive Portal, both the web application itself, our templates, and the user-provided content hosted there. We believe our future upgrade to a new repository platform will significantly increase accessibility.
EPrints.org and the EPrints Community acknowledged in authoring of this statement.
This statement was first prepared on 15 June 2022. It was last updated on 29 July 2022.
Contact the University of Warwick Accessibility service at: University of Warwick Accessibility service
Further information about accessibility: https://warwick.ac.uk/accessibility
