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:
- Electronic Legal Deposit Catalogue – https://eld.bl.uk
How accessible this website is
We know some parts of this Site are not fully accessible:
- Some legal deposit content is in a language other than English, and are not tagged with the relevant language
- Some legal deposit content does not have machine readable structural components
- The text size and spacing of some legal deposit material is fixed at the point of publication and cannot be changed by the user
- Some legal deposit content does not have alt text
- The title of the legal deposit material being viewed is not apparent outside of the reader software.
Compliance status
This website is fully compliant with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons:
Content not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
- Images within legal deposit material may not be marked with alternative text, meaning that assistive technologies can not present them to users with visual impairments. This fails WCAG 2.2 criterion 1.1.1 (Non-Text Content)
- The structure of legal deposit material may not be marked with appropriate headings, titles, or other structural components, meaning that assistive technologies can not programmatically detect the structure of the document and accurately interpret and convey the content. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.3.2 (Meaningful Sequence).
- Text spacing within legal deposit material may not be adjustable by the user, meaning that users with visual impairments or dyslexia may find it difficult to read and navigate the content. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.4.12 (Text Spacing).
- The title of legal deposit material displayed by the viewer is not available outside of the viewer plug-in, meaning that assistive technologies can not alert the title of the content to users with visual impairments until focus is shifted to the content of viewer plug-in. This fails WCAG 2.2 criterion 2.4.2 (Page Titled)
- Non-English phrases within legal deposit material may not be marked with appropriate ‘lang’ attributes, meaning that assistive technologies can not programmatically detect the language and switch pronunciation rules and users of such technologies may not be able to understand the content. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 3.1.2 (Language of Parts).
The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013 require the British Library to preserve and provide access to documents submitted to the archive in their original, unmodified format. The Library can not therefore alter the presentation of these works in any way. As such, the content presented in the Electronic Legal Deposit viewer plug-in is therefore exempt from the Regulations under Reg 4(2)(e) (Third party content), and 4(2)(f)(i) (Authenticity of reproduction of heritage items).
How we tested this website
This website was last tested on 07 April 2026. A full test of the viewer was conducted by Resillion on screen readers NVDA and JAWS, as well as assistive technologies such as Windows Magnifier and Dragon NaturallySpeaking. A manual WCAG compliance review was also performed to assess additional relevant accessibility criteria like colour contrast testing and keyboard accessibility testing etc. The British Library tested the catalogue website hosting the viewer using Google Lighthouse and Wave, and via manual checks on personal devices, laptops and phones, including some with screen reader functionality, and via desktop browser emulation of a variety of mobile devices.