Accessibility Statement - Discovering Literature

Scope

The British Library is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

The British Library operates a number of websites, subsites, and online services (“Sites”).

This accessibility statement supplements our main Accessibility Statement, and applies to the following Site:

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this Site are not fully accessible:

  • Some images do not have alternate text
  • Text does not have sufficient contrast against background colours
  • Browser zoom functionality is disabled
  • Some links are empty or unnamed
  • Headings are omitted completely or skipped
  • No language is specified

Compliance status

This website is not compliant with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Content not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

  • Heritage material is exempt from the Regulations under Reg 3(2)(f)(ii) where automated and cost-efficient solutions that would easily extract the text and transform it into content compatible with the accessibility requirement are unavailable. This content might fail any of the WCAG 2.1 AA Success Criteria, but particularly those related to the provision of alternate text or a transcript, subtitles, or audio description.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations  

  • Some images are missing alternate text, meaning that users of assistive technologies may not be provided with necessary content or context. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-Text Content). 

  • The colour of both text and links does not provide sufficient contrast against the background colour, meaning that users with moderate visual impairment who do not use assistive technologies may not be able to discern the content. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 (Contrast Minimum).  

  • Broswer zoom functionality is disabled, meaning that users with moderate visual impairment who do not use assistive technologies may not be able to discern the content. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.4 (Resize Text).

  • Some links are 'empty' or unnamed or are poorly specified, meaning that users of assistive technologies will not be able to understand the destination of the links, or be able to navigate them easily. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose in Context). 

  • Some pages omit or skip Headings, meaning that users of assistive technologies may not receive the content in logical order. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.6 (Headings and Labels).

  • No language is programmatically specified for the site, meaning that users of assistive technologies may not be able to render the pages into human speech. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.1.1 (Language of Page).      

Unfortunately we currently do not have any plans to resolve these issues due to a lack of accessibility support for Chinese character sets.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 21 August 2020. A full review of the site was carried out by the British Library using Wave and Google Measure.