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Accessibility statement

Contents
1. Introduction
2. Scope
2.1. orcid.org
2.2. Subdomains of orcid.org
2.3. 3rd party tools and services
2.4. Technical specifications
2.5. Our commitment
2.6. Level of conformity
3. Meeting the standards
3.1. Our opportunities for improvement
3.2. 3rd party tools and services
3.3. Exemptions
4. Contact us
5. Who to contact
6. Timeline

ORCID registry accessibility statement

Last updated Q4 2023

Introduction

ORCID is committed to making our websites, applications, tools, and services accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.

Accessibility is a core aspect of ORCID’s vision of ‘a world where all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time.’ One of ORCID’s values is inclusivity, and we strive to ensure that every member of the ORCID community feels welcome, respected, and treated with dignity.

In 2023 we made significant progress towards WCAG 2.1 AA and reduced the number of WCAG A and AA issues in the ORCID registry from 50 to 21. Of these remaining issues, 12 are in active development.

In June 2023 we undertook a second accessibility audit, with our baseline standard now set to the newly-released WCAG 2.2. 

Read more about our accessibility work on our blog.

Scope

orcid.org

The statement covers the ORCID registry – including the homepage, sign-in, registration, my-orcid, search and the public record landing pages.

Subdomains of orcid.org

Although we believe Info.orcid.org and support.orcid.org to be broadly accessible, they require auditing before they can be included in this statement. Info.orcid.org is based on an accessible framework and we rebuilt support.orcid.org in 2023 with accessibility requirements in mind.  Once auditing is complete we will update this statement to include the findings.

3rd party tools and services

Where services or tools used on ORCID.org have been supplied by a 3rd party, this content is not covered by the commitments set out in this statement. We regularly review agreements with these 3rd party providers, assess accessibility within our procurement processes, and actively work to improve the accessibility of our 3rd party integrations. More detail on 3rd party integrations can be found in the 3rd party tools and services section.

Technical specifications

Accessibility of the ORCID registry relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

  • HTML
  • WAI-ARIA
  • CSS
  • JavaScript

These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.

Technical prerequisites for using the ORCID registry

Our commitment

ORCID endeavors to meet level Double-A (AA) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. These guidelines provide detailed information on how to make web content more accessible for everyone.  

Level of conformity

The ORCID registry is partially conformant with both WCAG 2.1 and WCAG 2.2 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard.

Meeting the standards

ORCID is continually looking to improve the accessibility of our websites, applications, tools, and services. Our design, development, and quality assurance processes have accessibility ‘baked in’ from the outset. We focus on making the registry functionally usable as well as conformant. 

Measures taken to ensure accessibility:

  • Targeted accessibility work.
    • We prioritize specific accessibility improvements when possible and reserve time to do so. 
  • Continual improvements.
    • Whenever we update a user interface component, we incorporate changes to make it conform to WCAG2.2 and as accessible as possible.
  • Accessibility fully incorporated into the QA process.
    • New features are checked for keyboard navigation, screen reader accessibility, flexibility of content across multiple devices, and browser testing via AXE.
  • External auditing.
    • The ORCID registry has been externally audited by the Digital Accessibility Centre. We used their feedback to prioritize and inform our development.
  • ORCID accessibility guidelines.
    • Detailed guidance for accessible design and development is in place and regularly updated.

Upcoming accessibility improvements are detailed in the ORCID registry backlog.

Our opportunities for improvement

The remaining WCAG2.2 conformance issues are in the following areas:

  • Drag and drop.
    • Users cannot reorder lists of items with a keyboard
  • Focus order and styling.
    • Users may encounter unexpected focus order
    • Focus styling on certain components can be unclear
  • Session time outs
    • After a period of inactivity users are timed out of the Registry without warning
    • Users cannot stop the timeout or change the duration
  • Communicating status changes and notices.
    • Dynamic changes in status or page information are sometimes not communicated to screen reader users
  • Color contrast
    • Some icons and interface elements have insufficient color contrast 
  • Semantic grouping of elements.
    • Visually grouped elements that are not marked up as such
  • Communicating button state
    • Button states, in particular those operating show/hide functionality, don’t communicate state effectively
    • It may not be clear to screen reader users if a panel is open or closed

3rd party tools and services

We use a number of 3rd party tools to provide specific functionality on the ORCID registry. We try to ensure that the accessibility of these tools matches our own standards, but  in some cases they do not.  Note that we do not use 3rd party tools for essential aspects of the ORCID service and the registry remains fully usable when these tools are disabled.

We actively work with our tool providers to continually improve the accessibility of their tools and their implementation in the ORCID Registry.

  • HelpHero – In-product messaging
  • Zendesk – Help and support platform
  • OneTrust – Cookie consent

Exemptions

  • Where content in ORCID records has been supplied to ORCID in a mix of two or more languages we cannot guarantee that the languages used are marked up in the appropriate fashion.

Contact us

Please get in touch with ORCID if you:

  • Have a problem accessing or using an ORCID website or application 
  • Need ORCID content in an alternative, accessible format
  • Have a suggestion on how we could further improve our accessibility
  • Would be interested in taking part in accessibility testing with ORCID

Who to contact

The ORCID support team will make sure your enquiry reaches the right people at ORCID to help you with your issue. We will get back to you as soon as we can.

Contact the ORCID support team

Timeline

  • Statement created on 22nd June 2020
  • Last updated on 9th November 2023