Accessibility  Appendix 3: How we're improving accessibility

Web Accessibility Project

The Web Accessibility Project developed a plan in 2019 to address the many of the University’s web accessibility issues. 

The project aimed to address web accessibility issues across 67 core sites of the University’s digital estate, excluding system-driven sites.

The plan began in February 2020 with the creation of the compliant Design System and remediation efforts to meet WCAG 2.1 (later 2.2) AA guidelines.

Project effort was divided into three main work streams: creating new web user interface components in the Design System, testing and implementing those components onto new sites, and migrating and remediating on-page content, including Word and PDF documents.

Several areas of the University digital estate have either been moved onto the new Design System, the compliant WordPress estate, or SharePoint intranet estate. Significant milestones are covered under the ‘Improvements to the digital estate’ heading.

The project plan is subject to external factors. Dates for when these sites will be addressed haven’t been redetermined yet. However, it’s anticipated there will be constant improvements over the coming years.

This section will be updated when a new prioritised plan has been agreed.

Business as usual effort

For the parts of the digital estate that haven’t been in scope for the Web Accessibility Project, the University’s IT Governance, Risk and Compliance team is addressing non-compliances by working through a prioritised list of sites and systems with internal teams and external suppliers. Significant milestones are covered under the ‘Improvements to the digital estate’ heading.

If you would like to know when a site or system will be addressed, or would like to input on which sites and systems should be prioritised, please contact IT Services:

• Web: Use either the contact form for people who cannot log in to the IT site or the contact form for people who can log in.
• Phone: Call the IT Service Desk on 0113 343 3333.

Improvements to the digital estate

The following accessibility improvements have been made to the Leeds digital estate either via the Web Accessibility Project or ‘business as usual’ effort.

Design system

A brand-new, accessible design system has been built from the ground up.

This has meant the creation of a suite of fully accessible components and styles that will be applied to sites across the digital estate. 

The design system was applied to the main University site in June 2021, following a pilot application to the Wellbeing, Safety and Health site. It has since been applied to the Course Finder site and new patterns created for the faculty, For Students, and Accommodation sites.

Improvements and new, accessible components continue to be built for the Design System on a regular basis. They are then implemented on appropriate sites as soon as possible. 

Main University site (leeds.ac.uk)

Accessibility improvements to the primary University site include the following:

2021

• Our text contrast ratios meet the 4.5:1 and 3:1 requirements.
• Our pages should always have descriptive and informative titles. 
• The navigation order of links, form elements and similar parts of our webpages is now always logical and intuitive.
• The purpose of each link is clear from the text or its context alone. It easy to distinguish similar text items that link to different pages. 
• Page elements have been coded in ways that are compatible with assistive technologies.
• Page mark-up is used in ways that make the page more accessible.

2022

• We improved our cookie consent banner so that it doesn’t confuse the focus order of the page and doesn’t cover parts of the page.
• We have produced a Campus Directory, which is an accessible, text-based alternative to our interactive campus map.

Student site

2022

• A range of improvements have been made to the site content, including proper application of headings and improved link text.
• In July, a visual refresh of the website to make more of our text contrast ratios meet the 4.5:1 and 3:1 requirements went live.

2024

Work began on migrating and downsizing the Student website into a new version of the site that uses the University’s compliant Design System. This is expected to complete in early 2025.

WordPress sites

2022

• Content improvements have been made on many of the 38 WordPress sites that form part of the Web Accessibility Project’s scope. These include moving content from PDFs to HTML pages, improved use of image alt text, ensuring tables have labelled header rows, more accessible heading structures and other improvements.
• An update of the University-branded WordPress theme has been created and tested. It was expected to be implemented before the end of 2022. This would solve many of the issues outlined in the earlier ‘Foundation: WordPress toolkit’ section. 

2023

A new version of the University WordPress theme was applied to around 400 sites through the first nine months of 2023. This achieved code-based compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA. 

Course Search

2023

• The Web Accessibility Project designed, built, tested and implemented a complete suite of accessible components for the Design System to enable the Course Search site to be brought into compliance.
• Improvements included ‘typeahead’ functionality that attempts to pre-empt someone’s input in a form field, fully accessible checkboxes, radio buttons and date pickers.

Other sites

2022

• The Alumni site was moved into the main University site, which uses our accessible design system, and away from a platform that had significant accessibility issues.
• The Finance site was migrated from a non-compliant site to compliant WordPress and SharePoint sites.

2023

The Secretariat site was migrated from a non-compliant site to compliant WordPress and SharePoint sites.

2024

The staff intranet was launched, using the SharePoint platform. This is enabling the closing of the non-compliant For Staff site in mid 2024.

Other effort

Digital Accessibility site

A full set of guidelines for producing accessible web content and documents has been created. The Digital Accessibility site helps colleagues meet accessibility requirements within the University’s primary content management systems as well as Word and PowerPoint.

Digital accessibility benchmarking assessment

The University engaged a third party to benchmark our processes, practices, and materials regarding digital accessibility. The University was given a set of key recommendations that colleagues are working to implement. Many of these will have positive effects on the digital and web estates. As of early 2025, the University continues to work to achieve the recommendations.