Accessibility statement for microbiologyresearch.org

This website is run by the Microbiology Society. We want as many people as possible to be able to use it. We regularly test and improve the site to make sure it is accessible.

We are redesigning the site to make sure it follows the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 at Level AA.

Accessibility functions on the Microbiology Society Journal website

On our website, you should be able to:

see text alternatives for meaningful non-text content,
see captions and other alternatives for images and videos,
zoom in on content by up to 200%,
see lists and headings which are in an ordered sequence and are marked-up correctly,
interact with the website using a keyboard or assistive technologies like screen readers,
navigate the website in a predictable way,
get hints and prompts if you make a mistake when you’re navigating,
navigate the site using most browsers.

We do not have accessibility tools on the website, like overlays as tools like these do not meet all our accessibility criteria. Sometimes they even get in the way of a good user experience. We want to support our users by creating an accessible website.

How accessible is the Microbiology Society Journal website?

We are working to make sure our site is accessible and we know we still have work to do. Below, we have outlined the issues we are trying to fix, and the improvements we intend to make.

Article usage metrics graphs are not currently accessible to assistive technology.
Older PDF documents are not always fully accessible.
Audio descriptions, captions and transcripts are not always available for older videos.
We do not have audio descriptions for videos, but we try to use visual content in different formats where we can.
Some form fields do not include an autocomplete attribute.
Some third-party widgets do not meet minimum contrast ratios.
The ‘sort by’ function on our search page has no submit button in the mobile viewport.

Technical information about the website's accessibility

While the Microbiology Society is not a public sector body as governed by the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, we are committed to making our websites accessible.

Compliance status

This website is generally compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. We are continuing to work on the parts where we are not compliant.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is not accessible. But we are working to improve it.

There are some videos that are missing audio descriptions. (WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.5)
Some form fields lack an autocomplete attribute. (WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.5)
Some third-party widgets don’t contrast sufficiently with their surroundings. (WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3)
There are some links and hypertext that don’t convey the purpose of the link clearly. (WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4)
Some section headings in table of contents that do not describe the topic or purpose. (WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.6)
Older PDF content.

Captions for live videos

We use platforms like YouTube and Vimeo that provide a live caption service.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We do three things to improve accessibility on our website.

Use scanning tools to check for accessibility issues.
Do audits with independent accessibility testers.
Test new updates and changes to make sure their accessible.

Got a question about our accessibility?

If you have found something on our website which is not accessible, please let us know about it. We will try our best to provide an accessible alternative.

This statement was updated on 18 June 2024