Accessibility Statement for The Society of Occupational Medicine Website
This website has been built to comply with the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) (AA Level). This accessibility statement applies to The Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM) website. This website is run by SOM and we want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. 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
- 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’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.
How accessible is this website?
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
- you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
- most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
- some videos on the website do not have captions
- some of the online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
- you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
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, contact us: admin@som.org.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’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person
We provide a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment. If you contact us before your visit to us in person we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter. Find out how to contact us here: https://www.som.org.uk/contact-us
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
The Society of Occupational Medicine 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 partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.
- you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
- some videos on the website do not have captions
- contrast error with twitter logo
- empty link with stylesheet turned off
- redundant links
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
- Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations - some videos do not have captions, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2 (Captions). We plan to fix this for existing videos by 31/12/2023. When we publish new content, we’ll make sure our use of videos meets accessibility standards.
- Disproportionate burden.
Navigation and accessing information
There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option). It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content.
Interactive tools and transactions
Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.
Some of our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website.
We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information, and with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal, likely to be in December 2023.
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. By 31/12/2023, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages. 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. 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.
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
We wish to fix remaining issues and achieve full WCAG 2.1 compliance by 31/12/2023.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
- This statement was prepared on 20/02/2023. It was last reviewed on 20/02/2023.
- This website was last tested on 20/02/2023. The test was carried out by Komorebi Media LTD.
- We used the w3 best practice approach to deciding on a sample of pages to test.
OUR COMMITMENT
SOM strives to adhere to the accepted guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability. We will be continually working to improve the accessibility and usability of the website, but if you have any suggestions or are experiencing any difficulties downloading files or accessing a particular page please contact admin@som.org.uk