Accessibility Statement for OASIS

This Accessibility Statement was last updated on 23/11/2020.

This accessibility statement applies to the oasis.ac.uk domain, and principally the new application known as OASIS V which was first released in Autumn 2020. This website is run by the Archaeology Data Service (ADS), at the University of York.

The ADS is committed to making this website as accessible as possible to the widest possible audience.

This means you should be able to:

We’ve also tried to make the website text as simple as possible to understand.

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

This website is mostly compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

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

  • most older PDF documents uploaded by users are not fully accessible to screen reader software

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

email oasis@ads.ac.uk
Archaeology Data Service
Department of Archaeology
University of York
The King's Manor
Exhibition Square
York, YO1 7EP

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 10 working days.

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of OASIS. Any accessibility problems encountered while accessing OASIS should be reported to oasis@ads.ac.uk.

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).

As all reports are provided to us by Third Parties we are also be producing new guidelines for our depositors on how to create more accessible reports, new guidance on Preparing Accessible Documents will be available in Spring 2021.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, because of the non-compliance and exemptions listed below.

Much of the ADS content is provided to us by third party depositors for long-term preservation. As such much of our content falls outside of accessibility regulations due to the exemptions for third-party content and items in heritage collections that cannot be made fully accessible because of either the incompatibility of the accessibility requirement with either the preservation of the item concerned.

  • Some information is only available in formats such as PDF or Microsoft Word.
  • Not all ADS created PDFs have been designed for accessibility.
  • Third Party material, such as archived data, has not been designed for accessibility.
  • Archive data formats used for preservation purposes, such as PDF/A, may not be fully accessible.

We tested our website using a combination of methods to check our site:

  • Automated testing: we used third party software to scans our pages for accessibility errors and let us know which ones are the highest priority to fix.
  • Manual testing: we used an accessibility checklist to manually check a representative sample of pages from across our website. This included checking that our pages can be navigated using only a keyboard, and testing any colour contrasts that could not be automatically checked.
  • User testing: we’ve been talking to people who have access needs, asking them to show us how they use our website and the problems they face.