Welcome to the accessibility page for the Lyell Collection. The Geological Society of London aims to make its online journal and book content accessible to all our visitors and improvements to the site will be made on an ongoing basis. Our commitment to this endeavour reflects the growing customer need for accessibility to our content in order to best support the science and communities we serve.
File formats for our content
Our current journal and book content is available across the Lyell Collection in full-article HTML and PDF formats. HTML is considered to be the most accessible format. Content older than 2007 for books and 2000 for journals is HTML abstract only plus full-article PDF. All files are free of digital rights management (DRM).
Assistive technology compatibility
Testing was carried out using Adobe Acrobat DC, NVDA, VoiceOver, and the Select and Speak - Text to Speech (Google Chrome extension) in Windows 10. We also used the Axe and WAVE plugins for Chrome and the Google Lighthouse tool available within the Google Inspect Accessibility Audit tool. We do not endorse any specific software.
Our HTML journal articles are accessible to screen readers and can be magnified in the browser up to 200% without any loss of functionality.
We started producing accessible mathematical equations using MathJax and MathML in January 2019. MathML format is compatible with text-to-speech engines, can be magnified, converted to Braille and pasted into math equation editors and/or Microsoft Office documents. Content prior to January 2019 contains mathematical equations in image file format.
Our PDF files are accessible to screen readers and all PDFs should have searchable, selectable text. However, some of our older PDF content is not searchable as it is supplied as scanned PDFs. In this case an OCR PDF (with optical character recognition) should be available for screen reading. Where PDF content is not available, please email us at sales@geolsoc.org.uk and we will endeavour to provide a searchable version of the PDF.
We use alternative image text when possible, however, our research content does not currently use alternative image text because the images are scientific figures, which have separate explanatory captions.
Navigation of our publication websites can be made using standard keyboard shortcuts and all pages include a “Skip to main content” link to make it easier to reach the main content on the page. Pages are also descriptively titled and navigation links are consistent across pages to make it easy to understand navigate all of our publication sites.
Please note that all support documentation is on the website and there is no non-electronic documentation as the product is entirely electronic.
Accessibility standards
Our technology partner, HighWire, has an ongoing strategy to support accessibility as defined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (level A) and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. HighWire annually audits its book and journal site products against these standards. Standard HighWire pages for book and journal sites either ‘support’ or ‘support with some exceptions’ these standards where applicable.
The Geological Society of London is currently auditing its publisher-produced pages for conformance to the latest WCAG 2.1 guidelines. The Society is also working towards completing an international VPAT by end of 2020.
Contact information
If you have questions, comments or requests regarding accessibility or the content of this page, please email us at sales@geolsoc.org.uk or telephone +44 1225 445046 if outside the UK or 01225 445046 within the UK. We will endeavour to respond to your message within 2 working days.
This page was reviewed and updated May 2020