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Summon Accessibility Statement

All researchers, regardless of ability, need access to scholarly information. ProQuest and Ex Libris are committed to providing all our users with a fully accessible experience for research, teaching and learning.

At ProQuest, we make every effort to ensure that our platforms – including Summon – can be used by everyone. Summon is continually designed and developed to meet Level AA of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) and Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act for features and functions.

Accessibility Features and Gaps

Users of Summon should be able to:

  • Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard.
  • Go directly to main content areas on the page using skip links.
  • Easily read text on the page due to high color contrast.
  • Listen to most of the website using a screen reader.
  • Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software.
  • Zoom in up to 400% using browser tools without text spilling off screen.

There may be some parts of this website that are not fully accessible:

  • While the main workflow on this website is keyboard accessible, there are some areas that are difficult or impossible to navigate with a keyboard.
  • Some repetitive areas on the page are not skippable using skip links.
  • Labels are missing for controls in a small number of cases.

If you have a disability and need to make your computer, tablet or other device easier to use, AbilityNet is a recommended resource. We also recommend browsing free add-ons offered for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

Technical Information about This Site’s Accessibility

Summon is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with:

  • Level A and Level AA of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1)
  • Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act for features and functions.
  • The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
  • Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No.2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance Level and Report

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines v2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Access the full Accessibility Compliance Report (VPAT 2.3 and WCAG) for Summon.

Accessibility of this Platform

Summon is a discovery tool that searches across your library’s holdings for physical and digital resources. When you select a result on Summon, a new tab or window is opened, and you are directed to an external platform that hosts the actual document or item. While we try to make the experience of searching and evaluate results as accessible as possible, we cannot control the accessibility of your experience on these external platforms. If you experience accessibility issues on these platforms, please use their respective contact forms to report your concerns.

Keyboard Access

Most of the website can be navigated with a keyboard alone, but there are several areas that are currently inaccessible or hard to access.

Because the search results load continuously, the areas that appear after the results (on the right side of the page) cannot be accessed by simply tabbing through the page. To access these sections of the page, we recommend you navigate using headings; the titles of the sections are marked with heading level 3.

A small number of areas are inaccessible with keyboard navigation. On the Saved Items page, the citation style selection dropdown menu cannot be focused with a keyboard. On the results page, there are sometimes keyboard-inaccessible links that appear at the bottom of result entries for things like “About the author” and “look inside.”

Skip Links

While Skip to content link is available it doesn’t take the user to the content. Users have to tab through the elements to get to the content or utilize the headings.

Status Messages

There are a number of controls within Summon that show and hide information. While this helps sighted users avoid information overload, the status of these controls is not always communicated to assistive technologies like screen readers.

Areas where status is not announced include:

  • The suggestions that appear when typing a search.

Color Contrast

Summon meets minimum color contrast standards, but there are cases where text does not have enough contrast with the background color. These relate to supplementary pieces of information around the result items. For example, the color of “Original Research” and page number tags that appear before the titles of some results are too light.

If color contrast is a concern for you, we recommend utilizing one of the free browser plugins that can increase text/background color contrast, such as the High Contrast extension for Google Chrome.

Labels

Throughout Summon, form elements and buttons are given accessible labels, so you can use assistive technologies to determine the purpose of various controls. The majority of elements have labels, but there are a small number of missing labels. In these cases, there are usually adjacent text labels that describe the purpose of the control.

One missing label that might affect your ability to do research relates to the functionality to search within a particular journal. If you want to search within a journal, you can click or select the journal name below a particular result. This will reload the page with the focus on the search input box. Searching at this point will search Summon for results from only the selected journal. In this case, there is a text description above the search box that says “Search within #journal name#” but this text is not assigned as a descriptive label. If you are using a screen reader, this label will not be discoverable.

Accessibility Testing

The accessibility of Summon is a continual effort at ProQuest. Accessibility standards are built into our design, and style guides and included as part of requirements in our software development and quality assurance pipeline.

Summon code is checked for accessibility using a range of automated and manual checks including but not limited to:

  • Color Contrast Analyzer provided by WebAIM
  • Deque aXe accessibility testing tool
  • High Contrast Chrome extension
  • Keyboard-access manual testing and assessment
  • WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation tool) provided by WebAIM
  • JAWS with Windows
  • VoiceOver with Mac

Summon is tested on the latest version Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Edge, and on devices including Mac and Windows computers, and Android and iOS devices.

What We’re Doing to Improve Accessibility

Making content accessible is an ongoing effort at ProQuest. We’re committed to working with the community to ensure we continue to meet our customers’ needs. A list of our ongoing efforts include:

  • Testing with users of all abilities
  • The ProQuest Accessibility Council: a team of stakeholders working to increase accessibility resources and capabilities
  • Pursuing partnerships with colleges, universities and other institutions to assist us in reviewing and updating our accessibility standards
  • Supporting certifications for our employees
  • Consulting with, and performing audits through, accessibility experts such as Deque

Support and Feedback

If you have difficulty accessing specific Clarivate content or features with adaptive technology after trying the workarounds suggested in this statement, you can contact us using the links provided below. Our support services will respond within three days and are available to accommodate the communication needs of end users with disabilities. We will work with you to identify the best option for remediation, subject to content licensing restrictions and technical capability. 

Online: ProQuest Technical Support

Phone:
United States & Canada (toll free):
+1 800 889 3358

Outside North America:
+800 4997 4111 or +1 734-707-2513

Preparation of This Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement was prepared in February 2023 and reviewed in March 2024.

The website was last tested on February 14, 2023. The test was carried out internally at Clarivate.

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