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LEAF accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF).

Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework (LEAF) is run by University College London (UCL). We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website, which means that you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate the website using just a keyboard
  • navigate the website using speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader

There are a number of customisation options for your browser and device that could help you use this website and other websites more effectively. AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. You can see a full list of any issues we currently know about in the non-accessible content section of this statement.

Feedback and contact information

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

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact us:

Read tips on contacting organisations about inaccessible websites.

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

University College 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 2.2 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

This section covers issues that we need to fix and are working to do so. 

Site-wide

The keyboard focus indicator on the navigation menubar is a yellow (#ffcc00) border, which is too light in contrast against both the light grey and white backgrounds. This issue also occurs for all table headers and accordion items across the site. This fails WCAG 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast (AA).

At 400% zoom, the menubar is collapsed into a hamburger menu, which can be navigated to by keyboard, but cannot be opened using Enter or Spacebar once it has focus, and cannot be exited via the Esc key once opened (by mouse click). This fails WCAG 2.1.1 Keyboard (A).

Also at 400% zoom, once the hamburger menu has been opened (by mouse click), the “Admin” link is not clearly focused, as the focus indicator border is obscured. This fails WCAG 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum) (AA).

Home page

Headings are not sequential; there is a single h1 followed by several h4 headings. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

Every (identical) icon in the “Manage Institution Structure” hierarchy is missing alt text. The icons are links to each lab’s “Award submissions for: [lab name]” page, and so cannot be marked as decorative. This fails WCAG 1.1.1 Non-text Content (A).

There are more than 800 links in the “Manage Institution Structure” hierarchy alone, and there is no way to skip just the hierarchy, so users must navigate through all these links to get to the sections below.

Within the “Manage Institution Structure” hierarchy, all links apart from those for the individual lab names read “Edit,” “Add Lab,” or an isolated number.  This fails WCAG 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) (A).

At 100% zoom, horizontal scrolling is required to navigate the “Manage Institution Structure” hierarchy, but at 400% zoom, only a very small portion of the hierarchy is visible within its container, with a very large horizontal scrollbar as well as a vertical scrollbar. This fails WCAG 1.4.10 Reflow (AA).

View Labs page

In the “Labs” table, the table headers for the columns containing the buttons (“Lab Member View” and “Delete”) are empty. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

Create Lab page

“Employee count” and “Lab space” fields in the submission form are number-only fields (or “spin boxes”) that look exactly like text input fields. The requirement for numbers only is not indicated anywhere in the label text, nor anywhere else visually (ordinarily this would be indicated with up and down arrows at the right-hand side of the field), but attempting to input non-numerical characters with the keyboard has no effect. This fails WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (A).

Manage Lab Members page

In the “Lab members” table, the table headers for the columns containing the buttons (“Open lab” and “Delete member”) are empty. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

Award Submissions page

In the “Award Submissions” table, the table header for the column containing all three buttons is empty. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

At 400% zoom, the buttons run off the page and cannot be horizontally scrolled, so the text is not fully readable. This fails WCAG 1.4.10 Reflow (AA).

Local Guidance page

The table is not marked up as a table, and instead is made up of div elements designed to emulate a table. Screen readers read the headers as a single line of text, with all headers in the same line, and all cells are read as one combined paragraph as well. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

There is lots of similar link text in the table: “Add” over and over again.  This fails WCAG 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) (A).

The “Is Active” column contains symbol text without any other representation or alt-text equivalent to indicate a yes or no answer, and is not read at all by a screen reader.  This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

Assign Award Submission Auditors page

In the “Assign Award Submission Auditors” table, the table header for the column containing both buttons is empty. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

At 400% zoom, the buttons run off the page and cannot be horizontally scrolled, so the text is not fully readable. This fails WCAG 1.4.10 Reflow (AA).

Institution and Lab Statistics page

We cannot load any statistics (endless buffering), but there are no obvious issues with what we can see.

Institution Costs page

In the “Institution Costs (LEAF Calculator Factors) - UCL” table, there appears to be an empty column at the far left and far right of the table, presumably used for spacing/layout only. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

The focus border on the links within the table rows is not very clear to see, as it is hidden around most of the text and only a small part of the border is visible; it is also too low in contrast against the background. This fails WCAG 2.4.7 Focus Visible (AA).

Institution Email Domains page

The “Is Active” column contains symbol text without any other representation or alt-text equivalent to indicate a yes or no answer, and is not read at all by a screen reader.  This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

Institution Structure – Nesting Levels page

Both “Edit” and the whole “UCL Hierarchy” accordion heading have the effect of expanding and collapsing the accordion item using the keyboard, but the down arrow is not focusable, which is confusing and redundant functionality. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

The “Is Active” column contains symbol text without any other representation or alt-text equivalent to indicate a yes or no answer, and is not read at all by a screen reader.  This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

Within the expanded accordion, some of the keyboard focus indicators for the table headers are obscured at the top and bottom of the cells. This fails WCAG 2.4.7 Focus Visible (AA).

User Guide page

The user guide is provided as an embedded PDF file, which is quite well navigable by keyboard and screen reader, but we would advise providing easily-downloaded alternative formats such as Word and HTML as well.

Individual lab landing page

Heading structure on the page is not sequential (h1, then h3, then h6). This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A).

The links for Bronze, Silver, and Gold do not have accessible names; with a screen reader they just read as “link”. These links are also exclusively pictorial, so without an accessible name there is no way of knowing its purpose. This fails WCAG 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) (A).

The links for Bronze, Silver, and Gold have different meanings depending on the colour of the link icon. There is an icon key which describes the meaning of each colour, and which itself uses colour to emphasise what the user can expect to see, but without any text to contextualise it, the meaning of the link icon will be inaccessible to users who cannot distinguish between colours or shades, and screen reader users. This fails WCAG 1.4.1 Use of Colour (A).

Manage Award Criteria page

The keyboard focus indicator is a yellow border, which is too low in contrast with the light grey and white backgrounds. This fails WCAG 1.4.11 Non-Text Contrast (AA).

At 400% zoom, the keyboard focus moves from the hamburger menu to LEAF logo to two items that are not visible (presumably the items inside the hamburger menu, which is not open at the time), then moves to the accordion.  This fails WCAG 2.4.7 Focus Visible (AA).

Manage Calculators page

There are several “Start Calculator” buttons, which would be hard to distinguish for screen reader users. This fails WCAG 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose (AA).

Individual Calculator page

The keyboard focus indicator around the form fields is partially hidden. This fails WCAG 2.4.7 Focus Visible (AA).

All number-only fields (“spin boxes”) do not make clear that only numbers are permitted, and are visually indistinguishable from text input fields. This fails WCAG 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose (AA).

In order to submit a calculation, data must be given in the input fields, but the screen reader does not announce which cell it’s in (not sure if it’s a table or not), and once calculated, reaching the new calculated numbers using the arrow keys (requires going backwards), the numbers are read without context. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships and WCAG 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions (A).

At 400% zoom, each field takes up the full space on the screen and the field descriptions are not visible. This fails WCAG 1.4.10 Reflow (AA).

Manage Open Initiatives page

To add a new initiative, there is another number-only input field (“spin box”) for total savings that is indistinguishable from a text input field. This fails WCAG 1.3.5 Identify Input Purpose (AA).

If you find an issue that we have yet to identify, please contact us using one of the routes described in the ‘Reporting accessibility problems with this website’ section of this statement.

Disproportionate burden

At this time, we have not made any disproportionate burden claims.

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

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. We are currently working on fixing these essential documents or replacing them with accessible html web pages. 

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Video content

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations. We also have some existing pre-recorded video content that was published before the 23rd of September 2020. This content is also exempt from the regulations. All new video content we produce will have appropriate captions, audio descriptions and transcripts, as necessary.

Online maps

Our service includes the use of online maps to show certain geographical information. These are not used for navigational purposes and are exempt under the regulations. If you require the information presented in an online map in a different format, please contact us to discuss reasonable adjustments.

Third-party content

Our websites contain third-party content. We do not have control over and are not responsible for the accessibility of this content, but we make best endeavours to work with the third-party to improve its accessibility. This may include:

  • links to non-UCL websites
  • content/functionality on our website
  • content hosted on other websites, such as social media sites
  • documents which are sent to us and uploaded, or comments left on pages by members of the public

To help accessibility compliance across the sector, University College London supports searchBOX, a centralised, independent directory of third-party accessibility information. 

searchBOX catalogues the contact information and accessibility statements of third-party suppliers, enables the sharing of community-generated accessibility statements, and allows users to map their supplier ecosystem. 

Users can access third-party accessibility statements using the free searchBOX Finder service

UCL encourages all our partners and suppliers to support this effort by ensuring that their accessibility information is included in the searchBOX directory.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

UCL has created a Digital Accessibility Policy to help us embed accessible by design approaches to our own development as well as externally procured digital systems and we are actively engaged in processes to assess and prioritise remediation of existing systems.

In addition, accessibility is at the heart of our new Design System that will underpin all future digital system development. 

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 8 July 2024. It was last reviewed on 8 July 2024. This website was last tested on 8 July 2024. The test was carried out by UCL.