CLOCKSS Accessibility Statement

Introduction

CLOCKSS is a long-term digital archive, and our primary mission is to ensure academic content is preserved unchanged over long time periods. Trigger events happen when content that we preserve is permanently removed from the web, for example because the publisher is no longer in business, the title is no longer offered, back issues are no longer available, or there is some sort of catastrophic failure. In these cases CLOCKSS brings the content out of our archive and makes it available via a triggered content server and discoverable via our website.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. We strive to provide an inclusive and user-friendly experience and to comply with applicable accessibility requirements.

My Computer My Way has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability and the AT Hive can help you find assistive technologies that work for you.

This means you should be able to:

  • change colors, contrast levels, and fonts
  • zoom in up to 200% 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)

Our Commitment

CLOCKSS works to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA. Accessibility is an ongoing effort at CLOCKSS. We regularly review our website and digital content to identify and address accessibility barriers, taking into account evolving standards, user feedback, and available resources.

Accessibility Audit

Our website was last tested on 12/08/2025 against the WCAG 2.2 standard. The test was carried out by All Able Ltd. A representative sample of pages of the website were tested along with a sample of the documents from each area of the website. Testing was composed of a mixture of manual, semi-automated and assistive technology.

General website – this content conforms to WCAG 2.2 AA

  1. We have addressed all the issues identified in our 2025 accessibility audit.
  2. We will undertake another accessibility audit in Autumn 2026, and will address any accessibility issues identified.
  3. We will address accessibility issues identified by site users.

Archived/Triggered content - this content does not currently conform to WCAG 2.2 AA

Our website includes archived materials that are gathered from many sources and that were created over a long time period.

We are aware of the following accessibility issues:

  • We have evolved our web content database to better support accessibility for future content that is triggered. On each of the existing 81 triggered content title pages we now need to use this new functionality to correct list structures, add table headers and alt text for images, and populate content language fields.
  • For the full-text of triggered content, CLOCKSS will need to work to make PDFs accessible. CLOCKSS will also need to work with the LOCKSS team to resolve the following issues:
    • Some templated sidebar content does not respond well to magnification or reflow. This fails WCAG 1.4.10 Reflow (AA). [14]
    • Some pages do not have language attributes. This fails WCAG 3.1.1 Language of Page (A). [15]
    • There are some empty heading elements that disrupt AT navigation. This fails WCAG 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (A). [16]
    • Some pages contain links that have duplicate link text that are not otherwise clear. This fails WCAG 2.4.4 Link Purpose (A). [17]
    • Some pages contain text content that is visually used as headings but not programmatically marked as headings. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 Info and Relationships (A). [18]
    • Some author names do not meet contrast requirements. This fails WCAG 1.4.3 Contrast Minimum (AA). [19]

Our Plan to Improve Accessibility

  1. We will systematically work through the 81 title landing pages and correct the remaining accessibility issues by 31 August 2026.
  2. We will undertake another accessibility audit in Autumn 2026, and will address any accessibility issues identified.
  3. We will address accessibility issues identified by users who would like to use particular pieces of archived content.
  4. We will migrate to LOCKSS 2.0 software during 2026 and 2027. This is important because we rely on the LOCKSS internal web replay engine to serve content that we harvested from publisher websites.
  5. After migration to LOCKSS 2.0 our LOCKSS plug-ins need to evolve to correct the accessibility issues that have been identified.
  6. We will reach out to publishers to explore whether we can re-ingest or re-crawl some archived content to benefit from the publishers own investments in accessibility.
  7. We anticipate there will remain accessibility issues with archived content for some time.

Contact Us

We welcome feedback and will make reasonable efforts to respond promptly and to provide accessible information or assistance. If you find an accessibility issues that we have yet to identify, we would be grateful if you could let us know. If you require a specific piece of archived content and find it is not accessible, please let us know so we can address your needs. Please contact us at info@clockss.org. Thank you!

Read tips on contacting organizations about inaccessible websites.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 16 April 2026. It was last reviewed on 17 April 2026.

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