Accessibility Statement for University of London Housing Services, Private Housing and Advice Team

This website is run by the University of London Housing Services – Private Housing and Advice Team in conjunction with an external developer. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website.

For example, that 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 some of the website using just a keyboard
• navigate some of the website using speech recognition software

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. AbilityNet is a UK charity that exists to change the lives of disabled people by helping them to use digital technology at work, at home or in education.

1. How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible:

• Users will be unable to sufficiently navigate the website using a keyboard
• The site cannot be sufficiently navigated using voice recognition software
• you can’t modify the line height or spacing of text
• most older PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software
• some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
• you can’t skip to the main content when using a screen reader
• The colour contrast on most pages may be insufficient
• Many input fields have no description
• Headings are missing text on some pages
  

2. What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille,

please contact us:

• housing@london.ac.uk 
• 02078628880

We’ll consider your request and get

back to you in 10 working days.

3. Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think

we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: housing@london.ac.uk

4. 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).

5. Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Find out how to contact us on our Housing Services Contact Us page

6. Technical information about this website’s accessibility

University of London Housing Services 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 not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. The non-accessible sections are listed below.

7. Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible

for the following reasons:

Issues with technology

There are a number of technical accessibility issues with our website that are being addressed as part of our website redevelopment project. As we are taking an agile approach to the development of our new website, these issues will be identified and fixed through continuous updates.

Issues with text

Some link text doesn’t make sense when read on its own (for example, ‘click here’).

Issues with PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be marked up so they’re accessible to a screen reader.

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs that must be completed by our advice clients in order to use the housing advice service. By January 2022, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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. For example, we don’t plan to fix historical documents relating to policies, reports or advice guides.

Issues with images

Some of the images on our website may not have alternative text. We will ensure that all of our images have appropriate alternative text by January 2022.

Issues with interactive tools and transactions

We have some issues with colour contrast on our website that will be fixed as part of our wider website redevelopment.

8. How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 30.9.2019. The test was carried out using the Siteimprove

online tool.

We tested:

• Our main website platform, available at https://housing.london.ac.uk/
  

9. What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We will be:

• Refreshing our website (https://housing.london.ac.uk/) and fixing many of the issues identified above to help work towards compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria. This website refresh will be completed by January 2022.
• Doing a review in 2021 following the launch of our new platform in August 2020 to identify any further accessibility issues that
• need to be addressed to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria.
• Replacing our website (https://housing.london.ac.uk/) as part of a larger project to bring all housing websites together and onto the https://london.ac.uk domain. As part of this project we will seek compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria. This project is likely to be completed in 2022.

We are committed to improving accessibility across our websites, apps and other digital platforms.

This statement was prepared on 1st of October 2019 It was last updated on 22nd January 2021.