Accessibility statement

The EXCEL-PHARM consortium is committed to making this website usable by everyone, including people who browse with a keyboard only, a screen reader, magnification, or a reduced-motion setting. This statement describes how the site currently measures against the accessibility standard that applies to it, and what is still outstanding.

Standard this site is measured against

This website aims to conform to EN 301 549, the European accessibility standard for ICT, which adopts WCAG 2.1 level AA. That is the level required of public sector bodies under Directive (EU) 2016/2102.

Current status: partially conformant

Partially conformant means most of the standard is met, with the known exceptions listed below. It is stated as "partially" rather than "fully" because parts of the site have been verified by measurement while others have not yet been reviewed by an independent assessor.

What has been verified by measurement:

• Text contrast. Body text meets or exceeds the 4.5:1 minimum on every background the site uses, including text placed over photographs and over the navy gradients used for section backgrounds.
• Keyboard focus. Every interactive element shows a visible focus indicator, using a two-colour ring so that it stays visible on both light and dark backgrounds.
• Target size. Interactive controls meet the 24 × 24 px minimum, and primary controls are larger.
• Reduced motion. If your device is set to reduce motion, entrance animations stop moving and looping decoration stops entirely. Indicators that report progress — such as a form being submitted — deliberately keep animating, so that the feedback is not lost.
• Layout. Pages reflow without horizontal scrolling down to 320 px wide, in each of the three site languages.
• Forms. Every field in the scholarship application has a programmatically associated label, and errors are reported in text next to the field they concern.
• Search-as-you-type dropdowns. The nationality, country of residence, dialling code and year fields are custom widgets rather than plain menus, because they search as you type. They follow the standard combobox pattern: the arrow keys move the highlight, Home and End jump to the first and last match, Enter chooses the highlighted option without submitting the form, and Escape closes the list. The highlighted option is exposed to screen readers, so the whole application can be completed with the keyboard alone.

Known limitations

We are aware of the following, and would rather state them than leave you to discover them:

• No independent audit yet. The findings above come from our own testing — automated checks plus manual keyboard and contrast measurement. They have not been confirmed by an external accessibility auditor.
• Uploaded documents. PDFs and other files published on this site, including material supplied by partner institutions, have not been individually checked for accessibility and may not be fully tagged for screen readers.
• Third-party content. The site displays a security seal issued by an external provider. Its appearance and behaviour are outside our control.
• Screen reader coverage. Testing has been carried out with automated tooling and keyboard navigation. Systematic testing with each major screen reader is not yet complete.

Telling us about a problem

If you cannot use part of this site, please tell us — including which page you were on, what you were trying to do, and what device or assistive technology you were using. We will reply and tell you how we intend to resolve it.

Email info@excel-pharm.org.

If a document or page you need is not accessible to you, ask us for it in a different format and we will provide the information another way.

If you are not satisfied with our response

How this statement was prepared

• Method: self-assessment by the project's web team, combining automated testing with manual keyboard navigation and measured colour contrast.
• Scope: the public website at excel-pharm.org, including the scholarship application form. The administrative back office is not covered.
• Prepared: August 2026, and reviewed whenever the site changes materially.