It is important to us that as many people as possible can use southampton.ac.uk. Find out:
You should be able to use most of southampton.ac.uk:
Get advice on making your device easier to use from AbilityNet, a charity that helps organisations be more inclusive.
Find out about parts of our site you might find hard to access. We're fixing urgent issues as a priority. We've listed those first, followed by the 'important' issues.
If you use a screen reader, you may not be able to search the site from the main menu. Nor are you told about the icon to access the menu on a mobile device or zoomed in 200% or more. These issues are urgent for us to fix.
If you use a tab key and zoom in 200% or more, it may not be clear which menu item you can select. This is urgent for us to fix.
On study facility pages like 'wind tunnels', the 'More information' link may not be visible when you zoom in 200% or more. This is urgent for us to fix.
If you use a screen reader, you are not told that some options in the main menu such as 'Undergraduate study' and 'View all courses' are headings. Nor are you told what options sit underneath some of these headings. This makes it harder for you to understand how the website is organised and to get around the site. These issues are important to fix.
If you use a screen reader to search our subjects, you may not be told how many subjects relate to your search. You also will be told to use the form to 'filter courses', when this is, in fact, a subject search. These issues are urgent for us to fix.
If you use our course finder with a screen reader, you may have difficulty choosing options such as 'Postgraduate'. If you zoom in, the course finder is hard to view. These are urgent for us to fix.
If you use a screen reader, you are not told about the links for undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD options in the Study section. This is urgent for us to fix.
If you use the tab key or a screen reader, you may have difficulties in navigating through and selecting 'Facilities' on subject pages such as 'aeronautical and astronautical engineering'. This is urgent to fix.
If you use a screen reader, you are not told about the 'previous' and 'next' arrows on the study facilities boxes, like on the page about the wind tunnel, for example. This is urgent to fix.
If you use a screen reader, you may find videos, like on the page about wind tunnels, for example, which you cannot access because they do not have an audio description or text transcript. This is urgent to fix.
If you use our 'Find a person' search with a screen reader, you are told about a decorative ORCID element that you cannot interact with. This issue is urgent to fix.
If you use assistive technology to access the 'research institutes, centres and groups' search, you are not told about:
This issue is urgent to fix.
If you use a screen reader to search Research areas, you are incorrectly told to 'filter courses by name or UCAS code', instead of by research area. This is urgent to fix.
If you use a tab key to access academics' details on 'Research area' pages like 'Archaeology', you will not be able to use the 'People' boxes 'previous' or 'next' arrows. This is urgent to fix.
If you use the tab key to search for Research by 'projects,' 'institutes and groups', you do not have access to all the options. And, if you are a screen reader, you are not told the search options and what is selected. This issue is urgent to fix.
If you visit some pages we are working on, like news, events or business, you may have problems with:
We'll tackle these important issues after we have fixed our most urgent accessibility issues.
You can request any information you cannot access in an alternative format. Email your request: digital-accessibility@soton.ac.uk
We'll consider your request and get back to you within 30 days. Alternative formats include:
You can complain to us about problems accessing information on the website or in alternative formats. Email: digital-accessibility@soton.ac.uk
The Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) can help you do this. They advise and support people on equality issues.
If you are unhappy with how we handle your complaint about accessing our website or alternatives, ask EASS advisors to help you resolve the issue. Call them on: +44(0)808 800 0082.
This service may take your complaint to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which enforces the regulations on accessibility.
We are making our website content more useful and usable. We are publishing new pages in summer 2022 on courses and research that are easier for everyone to read and navigate.
This statement was prepared on 29 October 2020. It was last reviewed on 5 September 2023.
This website was last tested on 21 June 2022.
The University of Southampton 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 partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 A standard. The non-compliances and exemptions are listed below.
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
You may experience difficulties on our website due to issues we need to fix. These issues are not compliant with WCAG 2.1, many not meeting even the minimum standard (level A). The most common of these failures are:
There are currently no issues on southampton.ac.uk that we consider to be a disproportionate burden to fix.
Some content types are outside the scope of the regulations. We aren’t required to fix these, including:
We often do not have control over the accessibility of third-party services and content across our website. This includes things like:
But we’re working with vendors and reviewing our procurement processes to make sure as many people as possible can use these services.
We ask third-party suppliers to provide links to their Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR). They can do this using the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT). The template supports Section 508, EN 301 549 (PDF), and W3C/WAI WCAG.
We support the searchBOX project, which provides a database of accessibility information about third-party vendors across the public sector. You can search for third-party accessibility statements using the free searchBOX finder tool.