Accessibility statement for the Office for Students website

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

  1. Around 130 PDFs published since September 2020 have small accessibility issues. For example, the heading structure may be inconsistent or a logo may be missing alternative text. 
  2. Most of our excel spreadsheets published before October 2021 may not meet all the accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden

Many of the PDFs available on the website published before September 2020 are not fully accessible. They may, for example, have missing alternative text or bookmarks.

The digital publishing team at the Office for Students is small and works routinely with a heavy publishing workload. Given the volume of files in question, we judge that the burden of updating all these PDFs would undermine the team's ability to carry out the essential business of the organisation. 

Likewise, most of the spreadsheets available on the website published before October 2021 are not fully accessible.

Given the volume of files in question, we judge that the burden of updating all these spreadsheets would undermine the organisations ability to carry out essential business.

We will however aim to produce an accessible version of any file at an individual's request. To request an accessible version, email the digital publishing team or call 0117 931 7317.

Published 22 September 2020
Last updated 28 June 2023
28 June 2023
The page has been updated to remove two accessibility issues that have now been corrected.
29 November 2021
Due to pressures on resource we have not been able to make all revisions to correct the identified accessibility issues. We have also identified that many of our spreadsheets also do not meet accessibility requirements. The statement has been updated accordingly.
06 August 2021
Due to limitations of resource we have not been able to complete the amendment of all 130 non-compliant PDFs. We have therefore updated the estimate to complete this deadline to the end of August 2021.

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