Technical Accessibility Statement

Technical Information about Blackboard’s accessibility

Aberystwyth University is committed to making its Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance Status

Blackboard is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons. 

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations 

Documents

Some documents available on our VLE do not have alternative text on all images. This means that the information in them isn’t available to people using assistive technology. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-Text Content).

Some documents available on our website are not structured correctly using headings. This is confusing when the pages are viewed using assistive technology. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships).

Some documents are only available in PDF format. This can mean that users cannot enlarge text in the document without needing to scroll left to right to read it. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.10 (Reflow).

Some documents on our website do not have sufficient colour contrast in places. This can mean that text cannot be read by people with visual impairments This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 (Contrast (Minimum)).

Images

Some images don’t have a text alternative. This means that the information in them isn’t available to people using assistive technology. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-Text Content).

Menus

Some course menus have been amended to include textured backgrounds or poor colour contrast. This can mean that text cannot be read by people with visual impairments This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 (Contrast (Minimum)).

Video

Most Panopto lecture recordings don’t have captions. This means that users with hearing impairments may not be able to understand the video. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2 (Captions (Prerecorded)).

Some videos only have automatically created captions. This means that users with hearing impairments may not be able to understand the video if the auto-captioning is not accurate. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2 (Captions (Prerecorded)).

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

Documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. 

Video

Some of our videos don’t have captions. The accessibility regulations don’t require us to add captions to videos published before 23 September 2020.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility 

There are two parts to making Blackboard accessible:

• Ensuring that any documents uploaded into Blackboard are accessible as possible (DOCX)
• Ensuring that the Blackboard interface is as accessible as possible (DOCX)

Preparation of this accessibility statement 

This statement was prepared on 23rd June 2020. It was last reviewed on 12 May 2022. 

The system was last tested in June 2020. Testing was carried out internally by sampling areas of the system and performing manual checks.