Science in the Making accessibility conformance report

WCAG Edition based on VPAT® Version 2.4

Name of product

Royal Society Science in the Making website

Report date

January 2023

Product description

Science in the Making hosts the full collection of archival materials related to the Royal Society journal collection, published from 1665.

Notes

The following screens were tested in the scope of this evaluation

• Homepage

• Search page

• Search results page

• Collections list page

• In focus list page

• Collections detail page

• In focus detail page

• Archive item detail page

• People detail page

The following user actions were tested

• Navigating between different pages
• Performing searches (free text and filtering by facets)

Evaluation methods used

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Chrome DevTools, axe DevTools Browser Extension, W3C html validator, WebAim colour contrast checker, NVDA screen reader for Windows 11 on Browserstack, Screaming Frog for identification of images with missing alt attributes, text spacing bookmarklet, manual testing

Applicable Standards/Guidelines

This report covers the degree of conformance with the following accessibility standards/guidelines:

Standard/Guideline	Included In Report
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1	Level A (Yes) Level AA (Yes) Level AAA (No)

Terms

The terms used in the Conformance Level information are defined as follows:

Supports

The functionality of the product has at least one method that meets the criterion without known defects or meets with equivalent facilitation.

Partially supports

Some functionality of the product does not meet the criterion.

Does Not Support

The majority of product functionality does not meet the criterion.

Not Applicable

The criterion is not relevant to the product.

Not Evaluated

The product has not been evaluated against the criterion. This can be used only in WCAG 2.0 Level AAA.

WCAG Report

1.1.1	Non-text Content Level A	Supports	All non-text content is equipped with a text alternative except for decorative images.
1.2.1	Audio-only and Video-only (Prerecorded) Level A	Not Applicable	The site doesn't contain prerecorded Audio-only or prerecorded Video-only.
1.2.2	Captions (Prerecorded) Level A	Not Applicable	The site doesn't contain prerecorded audio.
1.2.3	Audio Description or Media Alternative (Prerecorded) Level A	Not Applicable	The site doesn't contain time-based media or prerecorded video.
1.2.4	Captions (Live) Level AA	Not Applicable	The site doesn't contain live audio.
1.2.5	Audio Description (Prerecorded) Level AA	Not Applicable	The site doesn't contain prerecorded video.
1.3.1	Info and Relationships Level A	Supports	The site uses semantic markup, text labels, and ARIA labelling to ensure that visual information and relationships between elements are available to assistive technologies.
1.3.2	Meaningful Sequence Level A	Supports	Content is presented to assistive technologies in a meaningful sequence.
1.3.3	Sensory Characteristics Level A	Not Applicable	No instructions provided for understanding and operating content used on the site.
1.3.4	Orientation Level AA 2.1 only	Supports	All content can be viewed in multiple display orientations.
1.3.5	Identify Input Purpose Level AA 2.1 only	Not Applicable	No input fields collect user information.
1.4.1	Use of Colour Level A	Supports	Colour is not used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element. In particular, care has been taken to distinguish links from other text.
1.4.2	Audio Control Level A	Not Applicable	The site doesn't contain automatically playing audio.
1.4.3	Contrast (Minimum) Level AA	Supports	Large text has a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 and normal text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.
1.4.4	Resize text Level AA	Supports	Except for captions and images of text, text can be resized without assistive technology up to 200 percent without loss of content or functionality
1.4.5	Images of Text Level AA	Supports	There are images of text on the site (printed as well as handwriting) because the purpose of the site is to present images of original documents. We, therefore, deem the presentation of these images of text essential to the site. Also, the user has the option to zoom into the images as well as adjust their brightness, contrast, saturation, greyscale, and more.
1.4.10	Reflow Level AA 2.1 only	Supports	Content can be presented without loss of information or functionality, and without requiring scrolling in two dimensions at a width as small as 320pixels and a height of 256 pixels.
1.4.11	Non-text Contrast Level AA 2.1 only	Supports	The visual presentation of user interface components and graphical objects have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 against adjacent colours.
1.4.12	Text Spacing Level AA 2.1 only	Supports	There is no loss of content or functionality when line height, paragraph spacing, letter spacing, and word spacing are adjusted.
1.4.13	Content on Hover or Focus Level AA 2.1 only	Not Applicable	No additional content is triggered on hover or focus.
2.1.1	Keyboard Level A	Partially Supports	search results and collections list page: Graphs in the filter by date modals not accessible archive item detail page: Keyboard users not informed that document can be moved/panned
2.1.2	No Keyboard Trap Level A	Supports	The user can navigate to and from all navigable page elements using only a keyboard without getting trapped at any point.
2.1.4	Character Key Shortcuts Level A 2.1 only	Not Applicable	No keyboard shortcuts are implemented on the site.
2.2.1	Timing Adjustable Level A	Not Applicable	No time limits are set by the content.
2.2.2	Pause, Stop, Hide Level A	Not Applicable	There is no moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating information on the site.
2.3.1	Three Flashes or Below Threshold Level A	Supports	Nothing flashes more than three times in any one-second period on the site.
2.4.1	Bypass Blocks Level A	Partially Supports	There is a link to skip site navigation at the top of each page. Search results are shown underneath a list of filters which cannot be skipped and have to be navigated past each time a new page with results loads. On archive item detail pages, there are thumbnails representing the different pages of an object. The thumbnails cannot be skipped and have to be navigated through before the user can access the content below.
2.4.2	Page Titled Level A	Supports	Each page has a descriptive title describing its topic or purpose.
2.4.3	Focus Order Level A	Supports	Focusable components receive focus in a meaningful and logical order.
2.4.4	Link Purpose (In Context) Level A	Supports	The purpose of each link can be determined from the link text alone or from the link text in context.
2.4.5	Multiple Ways Level AA	Supports	Multiple ways are available to find other web pages on the site.
2.4.6	Headings and Labels Level AA	Supports	Headings and labels describe topic or purpose.
2.4.7	Focus Visible Level AA	Supports	It is visually apparent which page element has the current keyboard focus.
2.5.1	Pointer Gestures Level A 2.1 only	Supports	All multipoint or path-based gestures (such as pinching, swiping, or dragging across the screen) can also be performed with a single point activation (using the keyboard).
2.5.2	Pointer Cancellation Level A 2.1 only	Supports	The completion of all functions is tied to the up-event.
2.5.3	Label in Name Level A 2.1 only	Supports	Where interface components present text, the accessible name for that component includes the visible text.
2.5.4	Motion Actuation Level A 2.1 only	Not Applicable	No functionality can be triggered by moving the device.
3.1.1	Language of Page Level A	Supports	The language of each page can be programmatically identified by assistive technologies.
3.1.2	Language of Parts Level AA	Not Applicable	The whole site is in English.
3.2.1	On Focus Level A	Supports	When any user interface component receives focus, it does not initiate a change of context.
3.2.2	On Input Level A	Supports	Changing the setting of any user interface component does not automatically cause a change of context.
3.2.3	Consistent Navigation Level AA	Supports	Navigation links that are repeated on different pages (for example the main navigation in the header) do not change order when navigating through the site.
3.2.4	Consistent Identification Level AA	Supports	Components that have the same functionality within a set of Web pages are identified consistently.
3.3.1	Error Identification Level A	Not Applicable	The only user input is the search field and there are not error messages associated with this input field.
3.3.2	Labels or Instructions Level A	Not Applicable	The site has no forms
3.3.3	Error Suggestion Level AA	Not Applicable	No input errors can be triggered on the site.
3.3.4	Error Prevention (Legal, Financial, Data) Level AA	Not Applicable	The site does not allow users to make legal commitments or financial transactions. There is no user-controllable data that could be modified or deleted. No user responses are submitted.
4.1.1	Parsing Level A	Supports	There were no errors when the test pages were runt through the HTML validator.
4.1.2	Name, Role, Value Level A	Partially Supports	The name and role of almost all user interface components are programmatically accessible to assistive technologies. There are a few exceptions when using third-party code over which have no control: The cookie preferences button causes an issue in automated tests. They report that when the cookies modal is closed, the button is set to aria-hidden true but contains focusable elements. When tested with a screen reader and it announced everything correctly. Also, the focus did not shift anywhere unseen when tabbing. More of an issue is that inside the cookies content modal, there is a toggle button for performance cookies which has no accessible name at all and is therefore not announced by assistive technologies. Another example of third-party code is iframes. This code is generated on other sites and then pasted into a page on this site. The generation of this code usually does not generate a title attribute to serve as the accessible name for the iframe. It is to be expected that not all content creators are sufficiently trained to edit this code and include the title by hand. Therefore, there may be pages on the site with iframes that are not announced properly by assistive technologies.
4.1.3	Status Messages Level AA 2.1 only	Not Applicable	There are no status messages that indicate a change in content without a change in context. The only possible place for a status message to appear like this would be in the search but whenever a search is performed or a filter is applied, the whole page reloads and therefore the context changes.