Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to the National Centre for Research Methods main website at ncrm.ac.uk 

This website is run by the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) at the University of Southampton. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

change colours, contrast levels and fonts (using browser extensions such as Stark)

zoom in up to 300% 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

We've also made the website text as simple as possible to understand, although the site contains much archived specialist academic content that was not authored by ourselves

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.  This mainly relates to legacy content that is considered to be of ongoing value to users, developed over the Centre' various phases since 2004.

Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software.

We host some research methods resources which pre-date modern web accessibility standards.  Our publications database contains academic publications dating back to 2004. 

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format please contact us by:

email info@ncrm.ac.uk

phone (+44) 02380 594539 (not available at all times while we are partially working remotely due to COVID-19 restrictions)

We'll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.

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, contact us by one of the means listed above.

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

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

Compliance status

This website is mostly compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA and also AAA standards.

All our page elements have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.  This complies with WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 (Contrast (Minimum))

The default human language of each Web page is always determined. This complies with WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.1.1 (Language of Page)

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content)

Some page elements are compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AAA standard, we aim to comply with this standard for text size and colour contrast whenever possible.

Disproportionate burden

Older audio podcasts do not have a text alternative. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.1 Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded). We are working to have transcripts available for all our new audio podcasts.

Transcripts are available for our videos, but they do not include additional audio description to describe important visual details that cannot be understood from the main soundtrack alone.  This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded)

We've assessed the cost of fixing these issues within the current website, but we believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations as we would need to re-create much of the historical series.

We continue to identify the most heavily-used content by reference to website analytics and prioritise the most-used resources for which upgrading is still possible.  Our newly produced audio and video content should meet these criteria.

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

Our website includes a collection of online resources and publications about research methods, built up since NCRM was founded in 2004.  Our publications database contains academic publications dating back to 2004.  Much of this material continues to be of methodological interest and we continue to make it available in its original form as a contribution to the research methods literature.

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. For example, we do not plan to fix archived publications held within our Publications database.

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

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We launched a new website in December 2020 which overcame many problems with our old site (developed in 2014) and we continue to identify and remedy remaining accessibility issues on an ongoing basis. In November 2021 we ran a feedback survey on our website which we anticipate will lead to further enhancements.  As we make these changes, we aim to continually improve site accessibility and publish revised and updated versions of this statement. 

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was originally prepared on 17 September 2020 and most recently updated on 8 June 2022. 

This website was tested during November 2021 by our internal team. We have sampled pages and documents of all the principal types, including the homepage, main section pages, content pages, images, video and audio content, interactive forms, PDF documents, navigation and site search functionality, contact information, legal information and this accessibility statement.  We have tested these pages using NVDA and VoiceOver accessibility software, Windows and IoS accessibility options, keyboard navigation and by using the WAVE accessibility tool.