Accessibility statement for Imperial College London website

This accessibility statement applies to content published on the Imperial domain www.imperial.ac.uk/. It does not apply to content accessed via another domain/subdomain e.g., https://asset-library.imperial.ac.uk or http://icis.imperial.ac.uk etc.   

For other web addresses, you should refer to the accessibility statement for that domain or subdomain.  

This website is run by Imperial College London.   

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 400% without the text spilling off the screen  
  • navigate most of the website using a keyboard or speech recognition software 
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and Voice-over)  

We have 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.  

How accessible the website is 

There are over 400 staff at Imperial who have access to publish content on the website. We share accessibility reminders regularly with all, and offer an accessibility training module to all new and existing members of the content creators' community, however, due to sheer size of the whole website (Over 50,000 pages) and the number of contributors, some of this content still may not be fully accessible, for example:  

  • some PDFs and other documents only partially compatible with screen readers. 
  • most video content that was uploaded pre-2020, does not have captions, transcriptions, or audio descriptions  
  • some tables do not have row headers  
  • some pages have elements with poor colour contrast  
  • some heading elements are not consistent   
  • some error messages are not clearly associated with form controls  
  • some parts of the website may not be navigable with keyboard only 
  • some elements on this website do not respond to screen readers (mobile and web) 
  • some images are missing alternative texts 

You can find the details of inaccessible content below under the “non-compliance with the accessibility regulations” section.   

We are constantly working on improving our website’s digital accessibility. Please contact us at [email protected] should you need any support at any part of your journey on our website.   

Feedback and contact information 

If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact [email protected] 

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille please contact [email protected]   

We will consider your request and get back to you in seven working days.  
  
If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page, call us at +44 (0) 207589 5111 or email us [email protected] for directions.  

We have installed DeafWatch transmitters across twenty-nine buildings at our campuses.  

The DeafWatch system works across multiple buildings, providing seamless but discreet day and nighttime fire alarm warnings for staff and students with a hearing impairment. Pagers are available via the College Fire Office and the College's Disability Advisory Service.  

Please contact us on 020 7594 8000 before your planned visit to arrange suitable support for your needs. 

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 this website’s accessibility 

Imperial College London 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

The website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines WCAG 2.2 AA standard. 

This website is partially compliant with the  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below. 

Non-accessible content 

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons. 

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

  • Most of the pre-recorded videos on this website are on “YouTube” platform. They have closed captions. However, this platform does not offer ‘audio description’ or ‘text transcript’ Nor is it possible to correct the Captions on the existing videos. This fails 1.2.3 Audio description or Media alternative (Pre-recorded) and 1.2.2 Captions (Pre-recorded) criteria. To overcome these issues, we are making sure all our future videos are presented either as an alternative to the information on the relevant web page or have a supporting function. So that our users with loss of vision do not miss on any critical information.   
  • Under 400% zoom; on Study- ‘undergraduate’ Engineering pages after opening the ‘compare’ menu there is a loss of right-hand side content, resulting in some of the options and/or information being inaccessible. This fails 1.4.10 Reflow criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2025.  
  • Following pages under some browsers in-built zoom or font size adjustments do not respond to 200% text resize. Elements are either partially obscured, cut off or overlapped. Making it difficult for the user to read the page.  Study page, Subjects page, Operational improvement page, Tech campus page, Parents page, Home page. This fails 1.4.4 Resize Text criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2025. 
  • On compare the courses pages, when the user makes a choice of multiple courses to compare, there are multiple links with the same link name: “view course” This will cause confusion to screen reader users as they will not be sure which link is for which course to “find out more”. This fails 2.4.4 Link purpose (In-context) criteria. We are aiming to correct this and make sure all links are unique and describe the page they are linking the user to by October 2025.
  • On the mobile version of this website, when navigating all pages using a mobile screen reader and opening the navigation menu, slash and greater than elements are announced which may cause confusion for users. In addition to this, the slashes within breadcrumb elements are announced. Accordion elements on the tested pages are not announced as expanded or collapsed which may lead to confusion over the function of these elements. When viewing articles, it was also observed that expand article buttons were focused but not announced which may lead to confusion for users. This fails 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value criteria. We are aiming to resolve this by October 2024.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/ and sub URLS (pages such as .../jobs/search-jobs and .../jobs/apply etc) non-compliances:  

  • We have now updated our "job description" .PDF templates, to meet WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility criteria, and started publishing new job adverts with this compliant version. However, there may be a few "Job description" .PDF documents that are still showing following non-compliances, if they were published prior to 22 July 2024:  
  • Missing Page title, this fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion, 2.4.2 Page titled. As of 22 July 2024, all our " Job description”. PDfs documents are in the new accessible format. We are aiming to resolve this by 1 October 2025. 
  • Missing language attribute. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion, 3.1.1 Language of Page. As of 22 July 2024, all our " Job description”. PDfs documents are in the new accessible format. We are aiming to resolve this by 1 October 2025. 
  • Non text elements Missing Tags. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion, 1.1.1 non-Text content. As of 22 July 2024, all our " Job description”. PDfs documents are in the new accessible format. We are aiming to resolve this by 1 October 2025. 
  • Document missing tags. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion, 1.3.1 Info and relationships. As of 22 July 2024, all our " Job description”. PDfs documents are in the new accessible format. We are aiming to resolve this by 1 October 2025. 

Should you have any difficulty during your job application either due to PDF accessibility issues or any other reason please contact [email protected]   

Disproportionate burden 

N/A 

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations 

PDFs and other documents  

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services. Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.   

Live video  

We do try our best to add captions to live videos as much as possible, even though live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.  

What we are doing to improve accessibility  

We are working on the findings of our latest accessibility testing and are aiming to resolve all issues listed under Non-compliance section above. We are aiming to meet the WCAG 2.2 AA standards as best as we can.

Preparation of this accessibility statement 

This statement was prepared on 10 June 2020. 

Reviewed on following dates: 

  • 3 August 2021 
  • 27 June 2022 
  • 08 November 2023  
  • 17 May 2024 
  • 24 July 2024 
  • 14 August 2024 
  • 15 September 2024
  • It was last reviewed on 26 May 2025

This website was last tested on 16 June and 22 August 2024.  These audits were carried out by Zoonou Ltd.  

Previously, an audit of the website was carried out by our internal teams on 20 May 2024, using automated testing tools (Google Chrome Accessibility Insights for Web) as well as manual testing against WCAG 2.2 AA. Last audit before that was carried out by the same accessibility quality assurance consultancy company named Zoonou on 8 April 2022 against WCAG 2.1 AA criteria.   

As we have over 50,000 pages on our website, we had to select a limited number of pages to be tested. We wanted to include as many pages as possible within our budget in this audit, the criteria on choosing the pages to be tested was the level of traffic, or the pages that would have a potential to be visited by a wider audience.   

Outside of the Level A and AA test execution, user journeys have been conducted to test the website's usability against various assistive technology combinations.   

URLs that were tested on our latest accessibility audit 

Test environments 

  • Chrome 127 - JAWS (desktop screen reader) 
  • Edge 127 - NVDA (desktop screen reader) 
  • Safari 16- macOS VoiceOver (desktop screen reader) 
  • Safari 16 - iOS VoiceOver (mobile screen reader) 
  • Chrome 127 - TalkBack (mobile screen reader) 
  • Windows Magnifier (screen magnifier) 
  • Chrome 127 - Dragon Naturally Speaking (speech recognition) 

Accessibility at Imperial