Accessibility Statement for the York Wiki Service

This accessibility statement applies to the University of York Wiki Service ( https://wiki.york.ac.uk ) , run by the University of York. The Wiki Service is a collaborative knowledge base tool, used by University staff to store, share and organise institutional information.

The software underpinning the Wiki Service is Confluence , supplied by Atlassian. Ensuring accessibility of the platform is a key focus of the provider, according to their accessibility statement. A detailed assessment of Confluence’ accessibility features can be found in the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this application. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • Use your browser settings to change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • Zoom in up to 200% without the text spilling off the screen
  • Listen to most of the website using a screen reader - for best performance we recommend using NVDA with Firefox on Windows, VoiceOver with Safari on OSX


AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

We know that some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • Navigating some pages may not be possible by using the keyboard alone
  • Many images and icons may not have alternative text/captions
  • Some of the navigation elements, notably the navigation menu on and the search box on the top of the page are not recognised by a screen reader before clicking on them
  • Some dynamic changes to content are not announced to screen readers
  • Some text formatting and UI icons fail to meet the required contrast ratio standards
  • Attached PDF documents aren’t fully compatible with screen reader software
  • The application itself has no built in accessibility settings


Parts of this website that are not fully accessible

The following pages do not support one or more of the WCAG success criteria

  1. Create from...
  2. All updates
  3. Blog
  4. Blog Post
  5. Create a Page
  6. Editor -main content
  7. Editor-Add a date
  8. Editor-Add a macro
  9. Editor-Add a restriction
  10. Editor-Invite people
  11. Forgot password
  12. Health Monitor
  13. Login
  14. Page Selected
  15. Pages list
  16. Popular
  17. Project Wide
  18. Recently visited
  19. Recently worked on
  20. Reset-password
  21. Saved for later
  22. Search Results
  23. Space selected
  24. Spaces list
  25. Confluence - Edit attachment properties
  26. Confluence - Attach Files
  27. Confluence exported word.
  28. Confluence - Export dropdown
  29. Confluence - Confluence Upgrade Matrix.


Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The University of York 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 partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.


Non-accessible content

The following items do not comply with the WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria:

  • Some Informative/active images are missing alternative text
  • Lists are not marked according to html standards. Visual lists are not programmatically marked on some pages. Some Visual heading texts are not marked as a heading.
  • Screen readers can read parent page content outside the modal using arrow keys
  • Colour is used to convey information that is not conveyed in any other way in the search results page and date picker page.
  • Few Link texts and regular texts lacks 4.5 to 1 contrast ratio with their background colours
  • Text content is lost at 200% zoom in some pages
  • Some elements are not accessible by keyboard alone. Some elements use device-dependent event handlers and are therefore not accessible by keyboard alone
  • "No replacement" warning is not announced to screen readers users in the Editor -main content page. User is not Informed of Copied to clipboard info in the Editor-Invite people & Health Monitor pages
  • The skip link does not become visible when it receives focus in all pages.
  • The Focus order is not logical in some pages. Opened calendar widget is not the next thing in the sequential navigation order after the control that triggered the modal in the Search Results page.
  • The purpose of some links are not clear within its context in the Editor-Add a restriction and Spaces list pages.
  • The focus indicator (e.g. border or dotted underline / background etc.) is not clearly visible as one tabs through the page
  • The primary language of the page is not defined in over 19 pages
  • When the element gains keyboard focus, there is an unannounced change to the page in the Date picker screen.
  • No visual label is present and the purpose of these fields is not clear without a visual label in over 10 pages
  • Some elements are missing either closing tag or opening tag
  • Some dynamic changes to content or elements are not announced. Some Buttons are missing accessible names. Some elements appears and functions like a button but are not marked up as such 


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

The Wiki contains many attached PDF documents that are not fully accessible, and they may for example not be easily accessible using a screen reader. 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.

Alternative formats

University of York staff and students can use Sensus Access or Blackboard Ally to convert PDFs and other files into an ebook, text file, audio or braille.

Reporting accessibility problems

If you find any problems not listed on this page, or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, you can report an accessibility issue.

If you are not happy with our response

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).

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 28 January 2021. We used a combination of methods to check the site:


  • Accessibility Evaluation Tool - we used WAVE to scan a number of sample pages. The software then evaluated the webpage and highlighted accessibility issues
  • Manual Testing - we used an accessibility checklist to manually check a representative sample of pages from across our website, this included:
    • Testing with a screen reader. As recommended by our supplier of Confluence we used NVDA to navigate the website
    • Manually testing site navigation by only using the keyboard
    • Testing with high contrast mode enabled. To test this we used a Windows 10 operating system with ‘black high contrast’ mode enabled, using a Google Chrome browser with the High contrast extension enabled