Declaration on Accessibility

 

JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH endeavours to make its websites accessible in accordance with the Act on Web Accessibility (WZG), BGBl. I. No. 59/2019 as amended, to make them accessible without barriers.

This declaration on accessibility applies to the website www.joanneum.at as well as to project websites of JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH.



Status of compatibility with the requirements

 

This website is compliant with conformance level AA of the "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines - WCAG 2.1" and with the applicable European Standard EN 301 549 V2.1.2 (2018-08) but with the following incompatibilities and exceptions.



Non-accessible contents     

 

The content listed below is not accessible for the following reasons:

 

a. Incompatibility with accessibility provisions
 

- WCAG Success Criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content):

Not all non-text content is accompanied by appropriate alternative text. This mainly affects posts published before 9/23/2020. For newer contributions, we are working on implementing them according to accessibility requirements.

- Success Criterion 1.2.2 (Enhanced Subtitles (Captions)):

Some of the videos embedded on this website do not have separate captions.  Videos newly created after the legal deadline of 9/23/2020 will be successively equipped with subtitles.

- Success criterion 1.2.5 (Audio Description (Prerecorded)):

Videos embedded on the website are hosted and published on the YouTube video platform. Currently, it is not possible to add an audio description for videos on YouTube.

- Success Criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships):

On individual pages, the heading hierarchy is not yet linear or the labeling of the heading structure does not correspond to the visual structure. In some cases, content that appears visually as a list is not labeled as such. Individual labels are not assigned correctly, are missing, or are not accessible with the screen reader.

- WCAG success criteria 1.4.3 (contrast - minimum) and 1.4.11 (non-text contrast):

A few texts, images and controls have insufficient contrast value.

- Success criterion 2.1.1 (Keyboard operability):

Sliders are not fully keyboard operable.

 

b. Disproportionate burden
 

- The majority of our videos are hosted and published on the YouTube video platform. It is not possible to provide the required audio descriptions for some of these videos. As a result, WCAG success criterion 1.2.5 (audio description recorded) is not met. Fixing this would impose a disproportionate burden in terms of accessibility regulations.

- Correcting the deficiencies based on the existing website would be disproportionate. The results of the assessment will be used to design the website according to best practices where possible.

 

c. Content that does not fall within the scope of applicable legislation
 

- For older documents with restricted access for the physically impaired, which are still excluded from Directive (EU) 2016/2102, no comprehensive change is currently planned.

- PDFs of print publications can be downloaded from the website. They are not fully implemented in an accessible way. The content presented in the PDFs is also mainly conveyed directly on the website in summarized form.

- Many, mainly older PDF documents and office documents are not barrier-free, e.g. PDF documents are not tagged, so that they can be neither completely nor sufficiently captured and used by screen reader users.



Preparation of this declaration on accessibility

 

This statement was drawn up on April 20, 2021.

The assessment was carried out in form of a self-test according to WCAG 2.0 at conformity level AA in the period from January to March 2021. The whole website and a selection of relevant subpages were checked.



Feedback and contact details

 

This website is constantly being expanded, maintained and improved. In doing so, usability and accessibility are of great concern to us. If you notice barriers that prevent you from using our website - issues not described in this statement, deficiencies in accessibility compliance - please let us know by email. We will review your request and contact you as soon as possible.

Please send all messages and suggestions to us at barrierefreiheit@joanneum.at with the subject "accessibility of the website joanneum.at". Please describe the problem and provide us with the URL(s) of the affected web page or document.


Enforcement procedure

 

If you do not receive satisfactory answers from the above contact option, you can contact the Equal Treatment Officer of the State of Styria by means of a complaint. The Equal Treatment Officer accepts complaints electronically via the mail address gleichbehandlung@stmk.gv.at.

The complaints are examined by the Equal Treatment Officer to determine whether they relate to violations of the requirements of the Web Accessibility Act, in particular deficiencies in compliance with accessibility requirements, by the federal government or an institution attributable to it. If the complaint is justified, the Equal Treatment Officer will issue recommendations for action to the Federal Government or the legal entities concerned and propose measures to remedy the deficiencies in question.



Measures for barrier-free accessibility

 

It is our great concern to make our research content as accessible as possible for all visitors.

JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH takes the following measures to continuously improve the accessibility of this website.

- Accessibility is part of our editorial guidelines. In addition, our editors are regularly sensitized to this issue.

- We regularly conduct random quality checks on accessibility.

- We continuously educate ourselves in the area of accessibility.