Updated September 2023 (information about new website testing)
Next update due November 2023 (more information about testing, and support we're getting from experts)
Our aim
NRICH wants to encourage all learners to engage with and enjoy doing maths. A fundamental part of our approach is providing tasks that are easy to get started with, but can provide a challenge for students when they are ready. Learning works best when everyone can get started, and everyone can get profitably stuck. We’re focusing on accessibility at the moment, to try and ensure this approach is as inclusive as we can make it.
This page addresses the methodology and reasoning behind our efforts to make the NRICH website accessible.
What we are doing
Throughout 2023 our website is going through a major rework, which will modernise and improve the user experience. We anticipate that the new improved website will be online in the autumn and will conform to WCAG 2.1 accessibility guidelines at AAA level in the main.
These guidelines are explained in more detail here:
The challenges for us
There are some areas where we believe we will fall short of full compliance. We will prioritise the work that will have the greatest benefit, and apologise for what we are unable to do.
- NRICH recently celebrated its 25th year of bringing its resources to schools, and we have built up an enormous amount of resources over that time. It’s possible that we won’t be able to make all the elements of these resources fully accessible, so we will focus on those in the curriculum mapping documents and those which we know are used most frequently.
- We are quickly building up a large amount of video content (see NRICH Live, from webinars and presentations). While we will provide closed captions for these, there may be visual information in these videos which is not accessible and is not practically possible to transmit via captions.
- We have an ongoing programme of improvement for our interactive web apps. We are making efforts to make these as accessible as possible, including making use of high contrast text, avoiding visual cues which use colour only, and providing keyboard controls where it seems important. There are intrinsic difficulties with making this type of app fully accessible though, when the mechanics of the game largely depend on spatial layout or other visual information. Developing an accessible version of this type of app may require building a new app.
Testing and advice
To make sure our work is having the effect we want, we are carrying out testing on the new website and resources prior to releasing them. This began in July 2023 and is ongoing.
We invited a group of teachers representing different settings and age groups to visit the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, and asked them to try using the new website in a prototype stage.
As well as looking at the core functionality of the site, and investigating teacher priorities for the site, we asked the participants to tell us about occasions when students had encountered accessibility problems with our resources.
Following the testing session, we have enough information to direct our work for the rest of the summer, before we run another session.
Get in touch with us
We are very interested in hearing about the experience of users with accessibility needs. For example, please let us know about any difficulties you have had with the site or the resources we offer, or resources that you would love to see us produce. Feel free to tell us about issues you have witnessed or heard about as well.
If you have a query or a comment, please contact us by email: enquiries.nrich@maths.org
NRICH is part of the family of activities in the Millennium Mathematics Project.