Website accessibility statement

The Bodleian Libraries runs a number of websites (‘our websites’). We would like as many people as possible to be able to use them.  

This accessibility statement specifically covers www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk, its child websites, its subdomains and other websites managed by the Bodleian Libraries. 

On our websites, you should be able to do things like: 

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts 
  • zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen 
  • navigate most of our websites using speech recognition software 
  • listen to most of our websites using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver) 

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.  

In addition, major operating systems produce the following guidance:

How accessible are our websites? 

We are working to improve the accessibility and usability of our websites. However, we know that some parts are not yet fully accessible: 

In particular, we know that you may encounter: 

  • PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software 
  • older videos that don’t have captions 
  • difficulties navigating some of our websites and online forms using just a keyboard 
  • you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader 
  • the text will not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window 
  •  you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text. 

We are working to address areas where our accessibility needs improvement. Please see 'Technical information' below and our known issues page for more details. 

Reporting accessibility problems with our websites 

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website.  

Please email communications@bodleian.ox.ac.uk if you: 

  • cannot access the information that you need and would like to request it in an alternative format 
  • find and problems not listed on this webpage or within our known issues 
  • think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements. 

We will respond to enquiries in no more than 10 working days but hope to do so faster than that in most cases. 

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). 

Technical information about our website’s accessibility 

The University of Oxford is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. As part of this commitment, we are required to publish known issues with our websites

The websites we cover are partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed on our known issues page. 

What we’re doing to improve accessibility 

The Bodleian Libraries runs many websites that were developed at different times using different technologies. 

We are committed to providing websites that are accessible to all and we are working hard to achieve that, but it will take some time due to the scale and complexity of the task. 

In addition to our plan to fix known issues, we continue to work on website content and structure. We are also updating the ways in which we provide training and best practice to those working on our website. 

How we tested our websites 

We tested out websites using the following methodologies: 

  • Sample page checks of carefully chosen pages and content types using a quality assurance tool; 
  • Manual user testing in some cases

We will continue to review the websites on a monthly basis to check new content. 

Page last updated: 23 September 2020