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Accessibility statement

The Gateway Excellence Start-up Center of the University of Cologne strives to make its website accessible in accordance with national legislation implementing Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

The following accessibility statement documents the implementation status for the domain gateway-unikoeln.de in accordance with the Ordinance on the Creation of Barrier-Free Information Technology under the Disability Equality Act of North Rhine-Westphalia and refers to the test result of the self-assessment in accordance with the BITV test procedure.

The website is checked continuously via random samples. Conformity can only be determined for individual pages. To make a statement about the conformity of the entire website, all individual web pages belonging to the website would therefore have to be checked. This is not practical for large websites. However, testing a representative selection of pages, i.e., a selection of pages that covers as many potential barriers as possible, allows conclusions to be drawn about the accessibility of the web presence as a whole.

Status of compatibility with the requirements

Our website complies with accessibility requirements according to the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) Level AA standard.
Conformance was verified through a self-assessment.

The following accessibility measures have been implemented:

  • Common assistive technologies, such as screen readers, are supported
  • All content follows a logical heading structure
  • The layout can be flexibly adjusted using the zoom function of standard browsers (CTRL/CMD +/–)
  • The responsive design ensures that content automatically adapts to different screen sizes
  • Forms include helpful input guidance and instructions
  • The entire website can be operated using a keyboard, including tab navigation

According to our current knowledge, the following content is not yet fully accessible. We are working to improve accessibility, particularly in these areas:

  • When using screen readers, error messages in forms may not be read correctly or completely
  • Despite our best efforts, some words or text sections may appear in a different language without being properly marked
  • We cannot guarantee accessibility for embedded content such as YouTube videos or content from external sources like third-party databases
  • Accessibility cannot be guaranteed for internally linked PDF documents that were uploaded via the content management system
  • Some interactive elements and color contrasts do not fully meet the requirements of the German BITV 2.0 standard

We are actively working to resolve these issues and improve accessibility as quickly as possible.

Creation of this accessibility statement

This statement has been updated on 16/07/2025.
 

Feedback and contact details

If you have noticed deficiencies in barrier-free access to content on the pages of uni-koeln.de, or if you have any questions about accessibility, please feel free to contact us communications@gateway-unikoeln.de.

Enforcement procedure

If you have not received a satisfactory response to communications or inquiries about accessibility within six weeks, you can call in the Ombudsman's Office for Accessible Information Technology. It is assigned to the Representative for the Interests of Persons with Disabilities in accordance with Section 11 of the North Rhine-Westphalia Equal Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities Act. If you would like an ombudsman procedure, please fill out the corresponding application and send it by mail or e-mail to the ombudsman's office:

Ombudsman's Office for Accessible Information Technology of the
State of North Rhine-Westphalia at the State Commissioner
for People with Disabilities
Fürstenwall 25
40219 Düsseldorf
E-mail: ombudsstelle-barrierefreie-it@mags.nrw.de