Accessibility

At Bristol University Press and its imprint Policy Press, we are committed to ensuring that all our products are made available to as wide an audience as possible. Our research and publications are there to influence and inform, so it is important to our wider mission that this content is accessed by everyone regardless of age, ability or situation.



We were proud to receive Highly Commended in the ASPIRE Accessibility Awards 2019, awarded by JISC.

How do we do this?

All eBooks published from April 2020 are available in both EPUB 3 and PDF options with eBooks published before this available in EPUB 2 and PDF. Ebooks published from April 2022 have access to alt text and image descriptions for the majority of visual content. eBooks published before April 2022 have no access to alt text.

The vast majority of journal articles, published after 2020, are available in HTML and PDF. This means full text can easily be resized or read with assistive technology, with mark-up that allows screen readers and keyboard-only users to navigate easily and intuitively. This means users can:

• change the font and increase/decrease font size
• reflow the text to fit any screen size
• adjust colour and contrast to suit their preference
• enable text-to-speech functionality

If there are any issues, we are happy to grant permission for the creation into the appropriate formats.

If you wish to request a file, please contact Jo Greig on jo.greig@bristol.ac.uk. We will normally take between 5 and 15 days to reply, although we will try and answer as quickly as possible. We are happy to receive requests from individuals or Disability Officers from any institution.

Access can depend on the availability of the title, as some of our older publications may not be available in digital formats and may take a little longer to source. If a digital version is not available, we will look at alternative scanning options.

Accessibility services

Our full collection of books is now available on the Royal National Institute of Blind People Bookshare database and also on Bookshare, an accessible online library for people with dyslexia, learning disabilities, visual impairments, physical disabilities, and other reading barriers.

If you are not able to find the title you are looking for, please get in touch directly and we will ensure it is available.

Digital rights protection

All our Bristol University Press and Policy Press content is protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, and the rationale and accessibility implications are outlined in our terms of use. This does not allow widescale copying or sharing of eBook content by an individual.

We would ask you to respect this policy as it is part of our commitment to protect our authors’ intellectual property rights.  If you do have an enquiry about using the content in an alternative way, then they we are open to discussions, so please contact Jo Greig.

Our website

Our website is compliant with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1. The sites display correctly in current browsers and using standards-compliant HTML/CSS code means that any future browsers should also display it correctly. If there are any issues, then please let us know.

The site was designed with accessibility at the forefront considering readability as it applies to typography, colour and and contrast. If there are any issues then please get in contact. 

We adhere to best practice guidelines for alt-text which provides captions for visual data and add captions to video content using YouTube auto captions. We regularly update our website to improve navigation and access to information. This update has been informed by all the best industry standards, but we are always keen to hear ways in which we can improve, so if something is hampering access, please get in touch.

Feedback

We would value your feedback to help us identify issues, successes and inform our future decision-making. Please send this, or any queries, to Sales and Marketing Director, Jo Greig at jo.greig@bristol.ac.uk or call on +44 (0)117 3945965.

Accessibility statement last updated: 19 February 2024