Access to Brill’s content for people with disabilities

 

To serve our customers and to make online content accessible to everyone, Brill is seeking to publish its material as inclusively as possible. To this end, Brill has improved the accessibility of its published content for the visually impaired. Brill's websites are easily accessible for everyone and comply with the WCAG2 guidelines (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). An overview of the accessibility statements for all Brill platforms is at the bottom of this page. For questions please contact us via [email protected].

Most of our content is available in both PDF and HTML format. However, for those books which cannot easily be accessed by those who are visually impaired, Brill introduces Accessibility on Demand.

Brill Introduces Accessibility on Demand

In offering ‘Accessibility on Demand’ (AoD), Brill offers on demand several formats that may benefit scholars who are visually impaired varying from XML, PDF, Word in one file or separate files to accessing this material pending individual wishes and requirements1.

At the same time, we encourage all Brill authors to write alt-texts for those non-text elements and they can be directed accordingly to Describing Visual Resources Toolkit – Describing Visual Resources for Accessibility in Arts & Humanities Publications.

Accessibility statement for www.brill.com

This statement was prepared on 23 January 2020. It was last updated on Oct 1, 2024Brill Platform Aspire Badge: Gold 88

 

Table of contents:

 

Brill is committed to ensure our websites are easily accessible for everyone. By adopting best practices and striving to adhere to current guidelines and recommendations we are continuously working towards improving accessibility. Wherever possible, Brill strives to comply with Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, EN 201 549 Accessibility requirements suitable for public procurement of ICT products and services in Europe – v2.1.2 (2018-08) and level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1).

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • Change colors, contrast levels and fonts. Different browsers include these options under different menus – they can usually be found under Tools, Settings, Options, Content or Reading View depending on the browser.
  • Zoom in up to 300% without loss of content or functionality.
  • Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard.
  • Use text to speech tools to read out website content (e.g. ClaroRead for Chrome browser). Text to speech tools are built into some browsers (e.g. Microsoft Edge) and are available as a plug-in for many others. Your phone, tablet or laptop accessibility settings are also likely to provide text to speech functionality.
  • Locate a web page within a set of pages in more than one way.

For guidance in making your computer more accessible, we recommend the AbilityNet website. This provides help with seeing the screen, using keyboard and mouse, hearing sounds and reading and spelling.

Available formats

Most of our content is available in both PDF and HTML format and are not protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). To open PDF files, you need a PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader. Adobe provides advice on the inbuilt accessibility features here: Reading PDFs with reflow and accessibility features.

Copy and Printing

The absence of Digital Rights Management software on our platform means assistive technology users should experience no barriers caused by print or copy restrictions. Normal copyright conditions still apply and can be found in our Terms and Conditions.

Browser and mobile device support

Brill.com is optimized for modern browsers including Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Google Chrome. You may experience unexpected behavior in other browsers, although we use fully validated code which should work on any browser. Brill.com is responsive, it re-organizes itself depending on the screen size and orientation of the device being used to view it. We test the experience on various devices including most popular IOS, Android and MS Windows phones and tablets.

How accessible is this website?

The majority of this website is fully accessible, and we run regular audits to identify any new problems. However, we know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • Some of our content in PDF format has not been designed for accessibility. This includes for example older archive content reproduced from original printed sources.
  • Heading use within content is not always consistent and not always useful for navigation.
  • Form fields are not always appropriately labeled.
  • Instructions and errors for the forms are also not programmatically associated with the forms.
  • Some parts of the website are not very easy to navigate using keyboard (e.g. when the site is viewed at high magnification, essential navigation collapses into non-keyboard navigable elements).
  • A number of images within HTML format content don’t include alt tags but most include adjacent description.
  • The site can be switched to alternate language, and the language of the page is set correctly. However, the language conversion doesn’t modify all of the site functionality, and screen readers seem to auto-detect the site as English, overriding the site setting. This might be configurable for an individual screen reader user.
  • Any given page may contain bilingual information. Page subsections, especially those provided by the content editors, do not have language identifiers, which causes unusual behavior for screen readers.

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

We now publish most of our new titles in accessible E-Book format. In case a title is unavailable in a suitable format you can enquire about this via our Accessibility Officer ([email protected]). We will consider your request and aim to get back to you in 5-7 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact our Accessibility Officer at [email protected].

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

This website is not completely compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed in the report attached below. We have commissioned an independent Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) report to help us understand where we can improve accessibility of this website. The latest report can be downloaded below. As we improve the accessibility of our website, we will provide updated VPATs on this page.

Download VPAT for brill.com - 15 July 2019 (PDF)

This VPAT includes referenceworks.brill.com, which was added to brill.com in March 2024.

We regularly test our website against the current guidelines and recommendations and prioritize any actions that derived from testing on our development roadmap.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

The majority of our website is already accessible for most users. We are continuously working on improving the experience for all our users and have identified the areas below for further improvements:

  • Improve use of headings to correctly organize content 
  • Ensure all form fields are labelled appropriately
  • Ensure the logical tab order corresponds to the visual order for the main site navigation
  • Fully support keyboard operability
  • Ensure navigation links (for example “Skip to main content”) are visible to keyboard and magnification users
  • Improve instructions and suggestions for form errors

Engagement with accessibility services

Brill has engaged with RNIB Bookshare collections (formerly Load2Learn) by donating digital files to the collection to ensure that accessible content reaches print disabled learners as fast as possible.

Accessibility of Brill platforms

Below is an overview of all accessibility statements of Brill platforms.

1: Provided these scholars already have access to this material, either through an individual purchase or via their institution.