Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to the GSA Archives & Collections website at https://gsaarchives.net which is run by The Glasgow School of Art Archives and Collections.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. We have made the website text as simple as possible to understand, and we are improving the site so that you are able to:

  • Change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • Zoom in up to 300% 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 (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

If you have a disability, AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use.

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not yet fully accessible. These are the known issues according to level of impact, from high to low:

General high priority issues
  • Some issues with colour contrast may make the site difficult to use for some users
  • Some hyperlinks are only indicated by colour which makes them difficult to see for some users
  • Some form controls and widgets (display modules) cannot be navigated only by keyboard
  • Some form controls are not well labelled and may cause confusion
  • Lack of alternative text for some non-decorative images may cause users to miss information
  • Some web page markup (code) is complicated and difficult to traverse with a reader
General lower priority issues
  • Poor reflow and resizing of the site when zoomed may cause issues for some users
Online catalogue

Our online catalogue is based on open-source AtoM (Access to Memory) web software (application). We have no control over the accessibility issues within the core of this application (please see below), but we have created a presentation layer that, where possible, improves accessibility. This is limited to changes of colour, typography, navigation and layout in the header/footer, plus some other visual changes to improve legibility in main pages.

To address the accessibility issues in the core of the AtoM application, Artefactual Systems (the authors) are upgrading the core presentation system. This is currently Bootstrap v2, originally released in 2012 with limited accessibility features. It is being changed to Bootstrap v5 with far better accessibility support. This work is in progress and Artefactual are hoping to include the improvement in the next major AtoM release (v2.7) later in 2022. However, this is a significant change and it is possible that Artefactual may need to wait until AtoM v2.8 before it can be included.

Please see https://github.com/artefactual/atom/issues/1509 for a discussion about this and more information about the upgrade to the Bootstrap presentation system.

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, please contact us:

We will reply within 7 days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We want to improve the accessibility of this website and our online catalogue. If you find any problems not listed on this page, or want to let us know about any accessibility issues, please contact using the contact details above. We will do everything we can to fix any accessibility issues reported to us.

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 have reported an issue and feel that we have not fixed it, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Glasgow School of Art is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

Our website is not yet fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. We are currently reviewing our website and will update this Accessibility Statement with a list of any issues we find. We will also publish our plan to fix these issues where possible.

Our online catalogue is based on AtoM (Access to Memory) web software. Any accessibility issues in this area can only be fixed by the authors, Artefactual Systems.

Non-accessible content

Any non-accessibile content will be listed below when our Accessibility review is complete. Last update, May 2022.

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

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDF documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDF forms that need to be filled in if you want to arrange a loan of items from our collections. We are improving these and will publish updated versions by the end of June 2022. 

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. We may decide to keep some of our older Research Guides and other non-essential documents in PDF format.

Any new PDF documents we publish after the end of June 2022 will meet accessibility standards.

Pre-recorded time-based media published before 23 September 2020

We do not plan to add captions to pre-recorded time-based media published before 23 September 2020 because these are exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

WordPress website

We are currently reviewing our website (excluding online catalogue) and will update this Accessibility Statement with a full list of any issues we find. Following this, we will provide dates when issues in our WordPress website will be fixed.

We are reviewing the latest version of WordPress (v6.0) released on 24 May 2022, that contains additional Accessibility features. We will update to this version as soon as we are sure that it works properly with other parts of the website. Last update: May 2022.

Online catalogue

Artefactual Systems, the authors of AtoM (Access to Memory), together with the AtoM Foundation are currently reviewing accessibility issues in the current software. They are planning improvements to future versions and we will update this Accessibility Statement when more information is available. Last update: May 2022.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 26 May 2022

Useful links: