Accessibility on www.gold.ac.uk

We want you to be able to use our website in your own way.

Primary page content

Accessibility statement for gold.ac.uk

This accessibility statement applies to www.gold.ac.uk and sites.gold.ac.uk.

Using this website

Goldsmiths, University of London run this website (www.gold.ac.uk and sites.gold.ac.uk). We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • zoom in up to 300% on a desktop 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 are also working to make the website text as simple as possible to understand.

The majority of video on our website is streamed by Vimeo.  See the Vimeo player keyboard short cuts.

Some videos are streamed by YouTube.  See the YouTube keyboard short cuts.

Audio is streamed by SoundCloud. Keyboard shortcuts for its player are:

  • Play/Pause toggle – Spacebar
  • Volume decrease – Shift and Down Arrow
  • Volume increase – Shift and Up
  • Volume mute – M

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website aren’t currently fully accessible:

  • Some elements are not keyboard accessible, and there are issues with keyboard focus
  • Videos do not have audio description
  • Audio streams do not have transcripts
  • Headings are not correctly used on some pages
  • Older documents may not be compliant with accessibility standards

We are currently re-coding sections of our website as part of a wider project. We are working to the WCAG 2.1 AA standard and includes many of the requirements for AAA.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format such as accessible PDF, email cmr (@gold.ac.uk). We’ll consider your request and get back to you in five working days.

If you need information on our courses or applying to study at Goldsmiths you can call +44 (0)20 7078 5300 (10am–4pm) or email course-info (@gold.ac.uk).

If you can’t view any of the maps you can call us on +44 (0)20 7919 7171 or email estates (@gold.ac.uk) for directions.

Our Contact page lists other departments you can call for information.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, contact cmr (@gold.ac.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

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Goldsmiths, University of London is committed to making its websites 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 listed below.

Non-accessible content

We are currently reviewing our website intending to make it WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. This is part of a project to replace the code of our website and will fix many of the issues below.

For most cases, we have new compliant templates, but moving 100s of pages over to them is taking a long time.

We expect to fix these issues by summer 2024.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

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

Some elements are not keyboard accessible, and there are issues with keyboard focus

Using the tab key to move around some pages can go in unexpected directions or miss out content. The focus area is not always highlighted. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criteria 2.1 (Keyboard), 2.4.7 (Focus visible), 3.2.1 (Focus).

Search boxes have issues with labels and placeholder text

We've changed some of our search input boxes to make them compliant, but there are still issues with:

Our main website navigation (in the top right of the page) has issues due to a hidden search box that fails WCAG 2.1 success criteria 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships), 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value).

Screen readers do not identify 'live' updates to pages

When typing a query in some of our searches we provide suggested results. On some pages, we have 'Read more' options to expand the text on the page. Screen readers are not made aware of these.

This fails WCAG 2.1 success criteria 1.3.3 (Sensory Characteristics) and 4.1.3 (Status Messages).

Some links to do not label their intentions

Some links to documents like PDFs do not include a label that signifies they are opening a different format. There is a small number of links that open a new window without a label.

This fails WCAG 2.1 success criteria 2.4.4 (Link Purpose).

Some information is repeated when using a screen reader

Some images have nearby text that adequately describes the image, and the alt attribute duplicates this text.  We also have two links to the same content next to each other. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criteria 1.1.1 (Non-text Content).

Accordions on programme pages

Programme pages are in the process of being rebuilt but the accordions on the current pages are incorrect as the ARIA role button is not allowed for its given element. The ARIA role should be appropriate for the element.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

Videos do not have audio description

(Video published before September 2020 is not covered by the regulations.)

Many of our videos are ‘talking heads’ with the content delivered through speech. Some videos will benefit from having an audio description for visually impaired people.

Audio streams do not have transcripts

(Audio published before September 2020 is not covered by the regulations.)

We will review the audio streams we have on this website and decide whether to provide transcripts or remove the streams.

Issues with PDFs and other documents

Gold.ac.uk contains many documents dating back several years. Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be marked up so they’re accessible to a screen reader, or they may have colour contrast issues.

We expect important documents and those in current use to be replaced as part of various projects at Goldsmiths to update policies and governance documents.

All new documents produced by ourselves uploaded from August 2019 are tested for accessibility.

We are required to publish some documents provided by external bodies (for example from The Office for Students) in the format they provide them and therefore cannot make them accessible.

The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. We’ll consider this as we review and update all our content.

Live video

Live video streams do not have captions. We do not plan to add captions to live video streams due to the cost and complexity involved. Live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

As our website evolves we always consider accessibility and how we can improve it. As part of our internal build processes, we run axe on pages to highlight any areas that may need addressing. 

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 19 July 2019. It was last reviewed on 19 September 2023.

Our website was originally tested as it was built in 2015. Since then, the WCAG guidelines have changed, and new pages and functionality added.

As part of our project to recode this website, we commissioned Dig Inclusion to test a selection of our pages in May 2019. This selection was of high traffic pages containing elements used across the site including:

  • Navigation
  • Video
  • Tables
  • Forms
  • Model overlays and dynamic content

Dig Inclusion provided us with a detailed report on the pages and what would be required to meet the WCAG 2.1 AAA standard. This informed the new code we are producing for our pages.

In addition, we tested our website with a screen reader in December 2019.

As we update our pages and templates we test them ourselves.