OCAD University Open Research Repository

Accessibility

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This page is intended as a generic accessibility statement for EPrints and should be amended as required before deployment of your EPrints repository.

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Accessibility statement for OCAD University Open Research Repository

OCAD University Open Research Repository is run by OCAD University. We want as many people as possible to be able to use OCAD University Open Research Repository. For example, that means you should be able to:

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 OCAD University Open Research Repository is

We know some parts of OCAD University Open Research Repository are not fully accessible:

What to do if you cannot access parts of OCAD University Open Research Repository

If you need information on OCAD University Open Research Repository in a different formats please contact our repository administrators. We will consider your request and will aim to get back to you within 7 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with OCAD University Open Research Repository

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of OCAD University Open Research Repository. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact us.

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 OCAD University Open Research Repository's accessibility

OCAD University is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

OCAD University Open Research Repository is not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. The non-accessible sections are listed below.

Non accessible content

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

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of OCAD University Open Research Repository. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, contact by email: repository@ocadu.ca.

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

We are yet to compile a list of where and how OCAD University Open Research Repository is non-compliant with accessibility regulations.

Disproportionate burden

We are yet to compile a list of problems with fixing them would be a disproportionate burden.

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

As OCAD University Open Research Repository is an open access research repository, the principal content made available to users are research outputs such as articles, papers, posters and reports, many of which are PDF documents. Many PDF documents, especially older ones, are not fully accessible to screen reader software and do not contain other common accessibility features. In particular:

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents placed in OCAD University Open Research Repository's archive before 23 September 2019 as these items are considered "archives".

PDFs and other documents added after 23 September 2019 may be user provided and therefore not fully accessible. OCAD University Open Research Repository has a review process that should identify these before they are made available for download. If this is not the case please contact by email: repository@ocadu.ca.

General issues

Areas of OCAD University Open Research Repository which are not document-based demonstrate good levels of accessibility. However, the following issues have been identified and are in the process of being addressed:

How we tested OCAD University Open Research Repository

OCAD University Open Research Repository was last comprehensively tested on 4 June 2020. You can read the comprehensive report.

Based on testing a default publication flavour installation of EPrints using standard test data, all tested public-facing pages currently report no errors, contrast errors or alerts except where this is essential for the functioning of EPrints as on Open Access repository (i.e. links to PDF documents) or due to duplications in the test data leading to alerts about shared alternative texts for nearby images. It should be noted that although Chromium's WAVE extension does not report any contrast errors for public-facing pages Firefox's does but the former was used for testing. Firefox's contrast errors are due to its default settings for the background colour of select boxes.

Many non-public administration pages do have significant numbers of errors or alerts. This will be addressed by the release of EPrints 3.4.3 if not EPrints 3.4.2. Typically where very large number of errors or alerts exist on a page, the majority are the same issue generated by a programmatic layout of information, (e.g. if one search result has an issue, the remainder of search results on that page are likely to have the same issue). This means it is likely only a small number of changes should be necessary to eliminate a significant number of these issues.

Miscellaneous pages like those for OAI metadata harvesting have been tested and found to have issues but are being considered low priority, as they are not generally intended for human use.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Our accessibility roadmap shows how and when we plan to improve accessibility on OCAD University Open Research Repository.

This statement was first prepared on 2 December 2019. It was last updated on 20 December 2019.