We are committed to making our website usable, regardless of your personal circumstances, location or technology arrangements.

Accessibility standards compliance

The Australian Government has endorsed the W3C*'s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 for all government websites.

*WC3 =The World Wide Web Consortium, an international community where member organisations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.

The WCAG document lists requirements for making web content accessible to a wide range of people. This includes people with disabilities, including:

  • blindness and low vision
  • deafness and hearing loss
  • learning difficulties
  • cognitive limitations
  • limited movement
  • speech difficulties.

Following the WCAG guidelines will also make our web content more usable to many other users, including older users.

It will also enable people to access web content using many different devices - including a wide variety of assistive technologies and mobile technologies.

We are dedicated to maintaining and improving on our current level level of compliance. We are committed to meeting the W3C's Level AA (double A) as per Australian Government accessibility requirements. If you encounter any problems, please send us feedback.

More information of Australian Government web accessibility requirements.

Related

Web features for accessibility

Our webpages have been designed in a way to enable users to navigate and access content in an accessible way.

Send us feedback – there's a website feedback form on every page of our site.

Pages in our website are structured using properly ordered headers and page structure.

We include a "Skip to content" link at the beginning of the page which allows screen readers to avoid reading out the navigation items on a page.

This is done to aid legibility.

It also means that users are able to skim the main parts of the page.

Some browsers can list all the headers on a page, or navigate directly to the next or previous header.

We use the "On this page" feature (which identifies heading level 2) on pages with several sections (longer pages).

We have a site map that is available in the footer of every page of the site that can give you further information about the second level pages on the site.

Most of the content on this site is text based. You are able to use your browser to resize text.

If cookies are enabled in your web browser, these settings will probably be remembered each time you visit.

The W3C Web Accessibility initiative has instructions and information on website navigation such as changing text size or colours.

Informative images have alternative text and may also be described further in surrounding information. Decorative images will have no alternative text so they can be ignored by screen readers.

All videos displayed or linked to from our site have captions and transcripts.

Our videos allow users to have full control while playing them. It allows them to choose when to play by clicking the play button on the video.

Assistive technologies & support

Support is available in a variety of ways.

We have assistive technologies that students and staff can use as well as support service for students.

Disability resources rooms

Our disability resources rooms have specialised equipment such as:

  • braille printers
  • track balls and mice
  • software for screen reading and magnifying
  • speech recognition software.

You can email [email protected] to find out more.

Accessibility support service

We have Accessibility Liaison Officers who can help our students with a range of issues related to studying at VU, including:

  • study advice
  • referrals
  • course adjustments
  • alternative assessment arrangements.

Contact accessibility services to make an appointment to see an Accessibility Liaison Officer.

Accessible maps

We are progressively developing accessible maps for our campuses pages on the site. Choose a campus page then use the map that applies to you.

Some of the features we are including are:

  • text alternative maps for our campuses if you use a screen reader, screen magnifier, or if you simply cannot read maps
  • visual aid map for people with issues that require them to see photos of places. They include photos and detailed descriptions of building entrances, lifts, toilets and other services.