Bloomsbury Digital Resources (BDR) is committed to ensuring that our platforms are accessible to the widest possible audience, including researchers, students, and readers with disabilities. This statement outlines our current level of accessibility, known limitations, and steps we are taking to improve.
We are dedicated to making the Bloomsbury Visual Arts hub a barrier-free academic resource. Accessibility is central to our mission to support equitable access to scholarship. W3C highlights that accessibility statements help organizations demonstrate care for users and communicate commitment to inclusion.
Scope of this statement
This statement applies to:
The desktop version of the Bloomsbury Visual Arts hub website; it does not apply to mobile or tablet versions of the platform.
All hosted content, metadata, and associated digital resources.
Accessibility standards we follow
The Bloomsbury Visual Arts hub aims to meet the following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards:
Our frontlist content workflows align with accessible publishing practices, including provision of alt text, closed captions and inclusive design.
We're working hard to achieve our goal of Level AA accessibility. Independent accessibility testing has identified the areas that need improving across our platforms and we have been working towards fixes for these. Our Accessibility Conformance Report (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template or VPAT) reflects our status.
The site includes the following features to support accessibility:
Text alternatives
Most non-text content is provided with appropriate text alternatives.
Any known exceptions are listed in the Known issues and limitations
Time-based media
Transcripts and closed captions are available for most pre-recorded audio and video content.
Audio descriptions are provided for some pre-recorded media where available.
There is no live audio or video content on this site.
Adaptable
Content is structured so that information, relationships, and layout presented visually can also be identified programmatically by assistive technologies.
Instructions for using the site do not rely solely on visual characteristics such as shape, size, or location.
Content can be viewed and operated in both portrait and landscape orientations.
Distinguishable
In general, color is not used as the only means of conveying information. See 'Known issues and limitations' for any exceptions.
Audio does not play automatically and can be paused, stopped, and volume controlled by the user.
Text can be resized up to 200% without loss of content or functionality and without layout distortion.
Text can be magnified up to 400%, although some pages may experience reflow issues at higher magnification levels.
Keyboard accessible
Site functionality can be operated using a keyboard.
Keyboard users are not trapped within modals or interactive components.
The site does not use character key shortcuts.
Time
The site does not include functionality that imposes time limits on users.
Seizures and physical reactions
In general, content does not include flashing elements that exceed three flashes per second. If present at all, a warning is included in the description.
Navigable
Pages have a 'skip to main content link'.
Landmarks are used to identify key areas of the page and support quick navigation.
In most cases, each page has a unique title to describe what's on that page.
Focusable elements follow a logical and meaningful order.
For most links, the destination is clear from either the link text or surrounding sentence context.
Navigation is not limited to the header menu.
Headings clearly describe and summarize their corresponding content sections.
Form fields include clear and descriptive labels.
Buttons clearly indicate their purpose or outcome.
A visible keyboard focus indicator shows which element is currently selected.
All elements that receive keyboard focus are at least partially visible on screen.
Input modalities
Functions that use a single pointer are completed when the user releases the pointer.
Most user interface components have a corresponding accessible name that begins with the text that is presented visually.
No reliance on device motion.
No components that require dragging movements.
Clickable elements are at least 24 × 24 pixels in size, with an exception for dictionary content types.
Known issues and limitations
Current limitations:
PDF viewer not yet able to display alternative text (a fix is in development) and context, such as captions, has not been reviewed for sufficiency. In some cases, where alternative text is available and PDFs can be downloaded, users may be able to access the content using their preferred assistive technology.
Third-party supplied materials may vary in WCAG compliance.
Mobile and tablet device accessibility has not been tested.
Non-core content page templates have been tested but customizations, if present, have not yet been tested so some issues may be present.
Some backlist titles are not available in HTML, only as PDF, which is not accessible. Frontlist titles in PDF will be accessible pending the fix mentioned above.
Dictionary content pages contain accessibility issues affecting navigation, keyboard use, and screen‑reader support, particularly around index navigation, pagination, and interactive controls. We are planning the next phase of fixes to address these issues.
Technical requirements
Our sites are all built using code compliant with W3C standards for HTML and CSS. The site displays correctly in current browsers and using standards-compliant HTML/CSS code means that any future browsers should also display it correctly.
Mobile operating systems: Mobile and tablet accessibility has not been tested.
The BDR platform has been manually tested using NVDA 2023, JAWS 2023 and 2024, and Voiceover on Windows 11 and macOS operating systems. On Windows 11, additional tools were used for testing:
Keyboard controls
Speech recognition (Dragon)
Steve Faulkner Text Spacing Bookmarklet
Color Contrast Analyzer
Browser Zoom
Measures we take to ensure accessibility
In the next quarter, we hope to provide Accessibility Title Lists from this page, which will list accessibility features for each title on the platform.
We currently plan to independently re-test our platform in 2026. A new VPAT will follow as will a program of any necessary further improvements. We will publish timelines here once they are more definite.
See content remediation options below.
Feedback, remediation and contact information
If your institution has subscribed to content on this platform and you require assistance in accessing the content or need it in an alternative format, please ask your institution's librarian to complete our Contact Us form.
If you find an error in the OCR or tagging that affects your screen reading experience, please report this to us on our Contact Us form. We will happily correct the content on the site.
We have a single accessibility workflow for all our Bloomsbury Digital Resources platforms. This helps us prioritize accessibility requests and ensures your request is actioned in the most efficient way.
Our customer support team will respond to you within five working days, and we will work with you to find the best option for remediation, subject to technical and licensing restrictions.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you require assistance or have any queries or feedback relating to accessibility. We are available to accommodate the communication needs of all customers.
If you identify a potential accessibility issue, please share the following information with us so we can investigate effectively:
The WCAG Success Criterion that is not met
The URL of the page where the issue occurs
Clear steps to reproduce the issue, including:
Browser version
Assistive technology and version used (for example, JAWS 2025 with Chrome on a PC)
The impact on the user
Your assessment of the severity of the issue. This is especially helpful if you are reporting multiple issues, as it helps us prioritize
The expected or desired outcome.
You may be asked to provide a screenshot or video of the problem in a follow-up email. Providing all this information will help us review and address issues as quickly and accurately as possible.
Doing your own accessibility testing?
If you use automated testing tools to review the accessibility of our platform(s), we recommend reviewing the results carefully for false positives. Many tools cannot accurately identify accessibility issues without manual review and evaluation.
Our own accessibility testing combines automated tools (as listed above) with paired testing and manual review. This approach helps ensure that genuine issues are correctly identified, and we believe it represents best-practice accessibility testing.
Compliance status
This site partially complies with WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 at levels A and AA.
Statement preparation details
This statement was prepared using:
Internal evaluations
Third-party accessibility review methods (for the VPAT)
W3C Accessibility Statement guidance and global best practices.
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