Accessibility Statement

Scope

This accessibility statement applies to The Ruskin – Museum & Research Institute’s website.

This website is run by The Ruskin – Museum & Research Institute on behalf of Lancaster University. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

zoom in up to 200% 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

We also try to make the content 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 created the website aiming to ensure it is as accessible as possible, but recognize that some parts may not be fully accessible.

Some links do not make sense when read out of context with a screen reader (for example ‘Read more’).
Some pages have multiple links with the same text (e.g. ‘Read more’) but different destinations.
Most older PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to a screen reader.
Some older videos don’t have captions.
Some older audio files don’t have transcripts.

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)

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 the-ruskin@lancaster.ac.uk. We’ll consider your request and get back to you as soon as possible.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, please email the-ruskin@lancaster.ac.uk.

What to do if your problem isn’t dealt with satisfactorily

If you have contacted us about an accessibility problem (e.g. because you needed information in a different format, or you think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations) but you feel that this has not been dealt with satisfactorily we want to know.

The first stage would be to raise your concern informally. The aim of this stage is to achieve a quick and easy solution for you. It would be appropriate to take the concern through the relevant contact listed above for reporting an accessibility problem.

But if we do not deal with your concern satisfactorily you can take it through to a formal complaint. See our Concerns, complaints and enforcement information.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Ruskin – Museum & Research Institute on behalf of Lancaster University is committed to making its website accessible following 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 2.2 AA standard due to the non-compliances listed on this page.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Links

You may find link text that doesn’t make sense when read on its own (e.g. ‘Read more’).
On some pages there are multiple links with the same link text but different destinations on one page.
Some links don’t provide text describing their purpose (e.g. content is an image, the link triggers a Javascript function, or link is generated automatically even when there’s no content).
Some links have an empty or missing ‘href’ attribute.
Some visible labels do not match the accessible name

PDFs and other documents

We have reviewed and updated a significant number of PDF documents to improve accessibility. It is our aim to continue reviewing PDFs for compliance and ensuring those that do not meet accessibility are either updated, removed or listed here.

The following documents do not meet accessibility:

If and as we find other documents do not need accessibility standards we will either resolve the issues or acknowledge them here. We will always seek to support access to documents.

Interactive tools

Forms

Several forms are provided by external third-party systems. We are working with providers of third-party systems to ensure forms provided by their systems are accessible.

Some forms have element id attributes that are not unique. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.1 Parsing. This criterion is obsolete in WCAG 2.2.
Some form fields are not labelled. This doesn’t meet WCAG success criterion 4.1.2: Name, Role, Value.
Some forms have text that doesn’t provide sufficient contrast. This doesn’t meet WCAG success criterion 1.4.3: Contrast (Minimum).
Some forms contain images without text alternatives. This doesn’t meet WCAG success criterion 1.1.1: Non-text Content.
Some forms have missing ARIA attributes. This doesn’t meet WCAG success criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value.

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

PDFs and other documents

The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 13 September 2025. It was last reviewed on 10 October 2025.

The website was last tested on 8 October 2025.

We use a range of tools to test our website, including Google Lighthouse (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/) accessibility checks, Accented (https://accented.dev/) with Axe-core (https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core), the world’s most popular accessibility testing tool. We include tests against these rulesets https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core/blob/develop/doc/rule-descriptions.md