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Accessibility

Accessibility statement

We want everyone who visits the IOPscience website to feel welcome.

We designed and built IOPscience to provide the content to as many people as possible, as simply as possible. This aim influenced every decision we made about the design of the website and the code we used to build it.

We understand our users are interested in the content we publish, so we have designed the site to keep its operations as hidden as possible, and make the readability of the content simple. We built our website using modern HTML, which provides a clear hierarchy of content that is easily readable both visually and by screen reader software.

To make IOPscience as usable as possible for all visitors, we have used the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 to identify areas where accessibility consideration is useful. 'Level AA accessibility' is our goal for the website.

We have also assessed our site against the Section 508 Requirements and Responsibilities , and the European standard for digital accessibility EN 301 549 .

For details on our support for the different criteria of these guidelines, you can download our VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template) as a PDF document.

What we have done and are going to do

Here are some areas we have focused on to make our site more screen reader friendly.

  • All our journal articles and book chapters are designed and built to work well with screen readers such as JAWS, NVDA and Apple's VoiceOver.
  • We build our pages using structured headings, content blocks and lists, which allow users of assistive technology to easily move around the page.
  • In our journal articles and book chapters, the Math content is available in MathML, which can be read by screen readers, pasted into math equation editors or Microsoft Office documents.
  • We have used ARIA (Accessibility for Rich Internet Applications) attributes to assist navigation, orientation and labelling for screen reader users.
  • Image files include alternate text to explain the content of the image, which is readable by screen reader software.
  • We have 'Skip to content' navigation available, so users can jump directly to the main content area of the webpage.
  • All navigation and controls are operable using keyboard only.
  • Where tabs are deployed, they have a logical order and are navigable by keyboard.

While we are working hard to achieve our goal of Level AA accessibility, we know there are some areas that still need improving. The following information explains what we're doing to make that happen.

Transcriptions: One area we are looking to improve is with the transcriptions and captioning of our video and audio content. While we currently provide a transcription of our videos, the implementation of this feature could be more consistent. Furthermore, engagement with this content might also be simpler. We are evaluating what would be the best way to deliver this content and will then work with our suppliers to ensure it is delivered in this manner.

Let us know what you think

We would welcome feedback on how you found the experience of using our website. If you had any problems using the site, please let us know about them, and we will do our best to fix them.