This website is run by Royal College of Music. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
• navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
• navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
• listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

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

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

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of RCM Research Online are not fully accessible:

• most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• some images (including linked images) do not have alternative text descriptions
• some form controls do not have an associated label

More details about areas of RCM Research Online that are not fully accessible can be found below in the 'Non compliance with the accessibility regulations' section of this statement.

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

Email research@rcm.ac.uk or call 020 591 4734 with details of the information required

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in maximum of 7 days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact Emma Hewett, Research & Knowledge Exchange Manager, on the email and number above: research@rcm.ac.uk.

Enforcement procedure

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).

Contacting us by phone

Call 020 591 4734.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Royal College of Music 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 not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. The non-accessible sections are listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

• Some form controls do not have associated names.
• The contrast in some parts of the website is very low.
• Some pages contain layout tables, which may be difficult to navigate with screen readers.
• Heading levels are skipped on some pages, this might make navigating the page using a keyboard more difficult.
• Some pages contain javascript jump menus, which may make navigating the website by keyboard difficult.
• A detailed list of non-compliance issues by page can be found on the Accessibility Roadmap

These issues will be resolved in a planned upgrade to this repository.

Disproportionate burden

None of the issues listed above present a disproportionate burden to fix. They will all be resolved as part of a planned upgrade.

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

PDFs and other documents

As RCM Research Online is an open access research repository, the principal content made available to users are research outputs such as articles, papers, posters and reports, many of which are PDF documents. Many PDF documents, especially older ones, are not fully accessible to screen reader software and do not contain other common accessibility features. In particular:

• many documents, especially older ones, do not conform to the PDF/A archiving format.
• many lack bookmarks or document titles, therefore failing to meet WCAG 2.1 success criteria 2.4.5 and 2.4.2.
• many discuss scientific or scholarly concepts which may be abbreviated with no mechanism for discovering the meaning of the abbreviations, or unusual words arising from scholarly discourse without definitions. These issues each fail WCAG 2.1 criteria 3.1.4 and 3.1.1 respectively.
• there may be some documents that fail to specify their human language, thereby failing WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.1.1.
• many documents may not reflow satisfactorily. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.10.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Our Accessibility Roadmap shows how and when we plan to improve accessibility on this website.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22/09/2020. It was last updated on 16/01/2024.

This website was last tested on 16/01/2024 The test was carried out by CoSector, University of London.

We used this method to decide on a sample of pages to test.