Accessibility in Ladok for Students

The Ladok Consortium is the organisation behind Ladok for Students. We want as many people as possible to be able to use the website Ladok for students. This page describes how the website complies with the Swedish Act on Accessibility to Digital Public Services, any known accessibility issues and how you can report deficiencies so that we can address them.

How accessible is the website?

We are aware that parts of the website are not fully accessible. See the section below about content that is not accessible for further information.

What can you do if you can’t use parts of the website?

If you need content from Ladok that is not accessible for you, but which is exempt from the scope of the Act as described below, please notify your university.

Report deficiencies in the website’s accessibility

We strive constantly to improve the website’s accessibility. If you discover any problems that are not described on this page, or if you believe that we are not complying with the requirements of the Act, please inform us so that we are aware of the problem.

Supervision

The Swedish Agency for Digital Government is responsible for supervision of the Swedish Act on Accessibility to Digital Public Services. If you are not satisfied with the way we deal with your comments, you can report this to the the Swedish Agency for Digital Government.

Technical information about the website’s accessibility

This website is partially compliant with the Swedish Act on Accessibility to Digital Public Services, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Content that is not accessible

When developing the current version of Ladok for Students, we have tried to address deficiencies in accessibility that existed previously in the service, and we strive to meet all relevant requirements in WCAG and EN301549. There is still one known error regarding the descriptive header of table sections, which is missing, resulting in users of screen readers being unable to see the header when they navigate to the table. At present there is no support for table descriptions in the software we use to create pdfs (FOP).

Disproportionate burden

The Ladok Consortium invokes an exemption for disproportionate burden in accordance with Section 12 of the Swedish Act on Accessibility to Digital Public Services Act for the content described below.

There is content in other languages in text sections that are mainly in Swedish, for example. Such content, with the exception of loan words, must be marked with the relevant language code in order to be properly emphasised by screen readers, hyphenated correctly, and so on. We have made the assessment that the conditions do not exist for ensuring language coding for each such occurrence, as the system is based on texts collected from a very high number of different sources, and it would probably entail a great deal of work at a large number of higher education institutions to review and mark each such occurrence. Furthermore, we believe that it will not be very long before screen readers will be able to automatically detect language and adapt reading accordingly.

The user is logged out after a prolonged period of inactivity without receiving a message with an offer of more time. It is our assessment is that the negative aspects of adding such a feature (cost, complexity, robustness, etc.) do not outweigh the limited inconvenience that – in this specific context – may be experienced by users who, after a long period of inactivity, are logged out.

The accessibility standards include a criterion that states that input fields for “common purposes” such as email and the like must be marked in a standardised manner for the purpose in question. For example, autocomplete=”email”. This would enable the user’s browser to remember what the user has entered in such a field, and be able to suggest this as a quick choice the next time the user visits a form asking for the same information. This can save energy and make it easier, not least for users with certain cognitive or motor disabilities. But it also means that personal data is stored in the equipment, which may potentially mean that this data could leak to unauthorised persons. For example, if the user borrows a computer, which is then taken over by someone else without the accounts being changed. After a balancing of interests, we have chosen to instead apply the setting autocomplete =”off”. This means slightly reduced accessibility, but improved data protection.

How we tested the website

We arranged for an independent actor to review accessibility, by means of both usage tests and an expert review in the previous version of the interface.

In usage tests involving people with disabilities, the service was perceived – not in full, but to a large extent – as being accessible. But a systematic review based on WCAG criteria identified several deficiencies, which could potentially represent obstacles for some users. Following this review, we have developed the new version of Ladok for Students, in which we have taken these deficiencies into account.

The last assessment was conducted in the first half of 2021.

The report was most recently updated on 16 November 2021.