SAGE Campus Accessibility Guide

Last updated: 25 Oct 2023

Welcome to the accessibility guide for Sage Campus. We frequently make improvements to make our site more accessible, so you may wish to bookmark this page and check back every now and then.

Campus is dedicated to enhancing the accessibility of our courses. We are currently undergoing an accessibility remediation project where we are actively updating our courses to ensure they align with accessibility standards. Our primary objective is to ensure that all course content can be easily accessed through screen readers, making it available to a wide range of individuals. We are committed to continuous improvement, incorporating feedback and new information to optimize our courses. Additionally, we are reevaluating course activities and interactive elements to ensure keyboard compatibility and screen reader compatibility. We are committed to enhancing the accessibility of our existing courses, but also designing our new courses in Collection 2 with accessibility as a central focus. Furthermore, we are dedicated to providing high-quality transcripts for all video and audio content in our new courses. It should also be noted that we strive for conformance to WCAG 2.1 (soon 2.2) AA accessibility standards. 

When developing Campus courses, we embrace the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. Our objective is to make knowledge accessible to all learners and empower them to feel confident in their knowledge and skills. Recognizing the diverse ways in which people learn, we employ the UDL framework to enhance teaching and learning for everyone involved. Many of our decisions, from content selection to its presentation, are influenced by the principles of the UDL framework. We are committed to implementing exceptional pedagogy and instructional design practices to mold learners into motivated, resourceful, knowledgeable, and goal-oriented individuals.  

At Campus, our top priority is to ensure that our content is accessible, inclusive, and engaging for all. We understand that online learning is an ever-changing field, and we remain open to continuous improvement around best practice in accessibility and universal design. We encourage collaboration with our learners and experts in the field to continually refine and improve our courses. Our commitment to accessibility and good learning design is an ongoing journey, and we are dedicated to making the learning experience enriching and accessible to all.


This page is intended as a user guide to the site’s accessibility features. If you would like to request specific information on WCAG AA conformance and compliance with accessibility directives (including VPAT requests), you can message Sage’s accessibility team at online.accessibility@sagepub.com. If you’re interested in the accessibility of other Sage products and formats, or accessibility at Sage generally, see our global accessibility statement.

This document is also available as an accessible PDF. If you would like this document in an alternative format, or if you have any other questions about the accessibility of Sage Campus, contact us at  online.accessibility@sagepub.com.

Sage Campus content and alternative formats

The Sage Campus platform allows users to access different courses through its interface, as well as options to download course resources, video transcripts and course certificates in PDF format. Instructor cohort and course completion reports are available to download as CSV files. Courses on the platform have been created using the Evolve authoring tool and are provided as SCORM files. All content provided through the platform is DRM-free and there are no technical limitations placed on downloading or printing, though you should ensure that your use of the content is reasonable and complies with our terms of use.

If you have a question or need further information about accessing or downloading alternative formats for Sage Data content please contact accessrequest@sagepub.com or online.accessibility@sagepub.com. We reply to all inquiries promptly, typically within five working days. If we do not have a requested file in-house, we shall exercise reasonable efforts to have the file produced at no cost to the requestor. Please note this service may take 2-3 weeks. PDFs obtained from Sage directly are also DRM-free (no password protection or print/copy restrictions) and permit magnification by the rendering application. Please note that accessible copies are issued for use by qualified students only. Sage also supports our readers by providing book content through the RNIB Bookshare, Bookshare, and AccessText Network initiatives.

Reading and viewing guidance – Sage Campus interface

Specific guidance for keyboard navigation

You can use a keyboard to navigate through Sage Campus and use its features. Use the tab key to move through the interactive elements of the page and the visible outline will indicate which element has focus. Most features on the site have been designed not to rely on mouse-only interactions like hovering. Some courses may contain drag and drop interactions that have accessible equivalents.

Skipping repetitive content

Sage Campus contains a ‘Skip to main content’ link on each page, which becomes visible when it receives focus. This link always appears as the first link on the page, so you can navigate to it by tabbing down once when the page loads, or tabbing back up to the top of the page at any time. Clicking the link will bypass the site’s navigation menus and move focus to the page’s main content.

Limitations and exceptions: on certain pages the skip link may visibly move page to the H1, but screen reader focus may remain on skip link and page is read completely. Work to address this issue is on the roadmap.

Specific guidance for visually impaired users

Reading order

Reading order usually follows the visual order of the content and uses a left-to-right, top-to-bottom convention.

Navigating by page section

Each page on Sage Campus is divided into landmarks so that the layout of the page can be perceived by assistive technologies. As well as using the skip link on each page to bypass repetitive elements, if you use a screen reader you can use these landmarks to scan and navigate the page. Useful landmarks include:

  • Banner: The site's global header containing a link to the homepage, a notification menu, and a login and dashboard navigation menu.

  • Main: The main content of the page. Structurally, this is always the first landmark after the banner landmark.

  • Navigation: Navigation elements.

  • Contentinfo: The site's footer where useful site-wide information, such as policies and contact information, can be found.

  • Region: The site also contains miscellaneous named regions.      

Navigating by heading

Attention has been given to each page’s semantic structure (i.e., its h1 to h6 tags) to ensure that headings are descriptive and useful.

Limitations and exceptions: some pages on Sage Campus present inconsistent heading structures that may hinder some users’ experiences. Fixes to these headings are on Sage Campus’ accessibility roadmap.

Color contrast

All text on the platform meets minimum recommended contrast ratios against the background. This is 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. If you still have trouble reading text on the site, the next section contains information about changing the text size. Alternatively, you may find it helpful to use a browser extension to specify your own color combinations, such as Change Colors for Chrome.

Limitations and exceptions: some content may contain figures and graphics (including images of text) that do not use sufficient color contrast or use color as the only means of conveying information. If you find any graphics to be illegible, contact online.accessibility@sagepub.com and we will endeavor to update them.

Text size and magnification

You can change the text size of content and style of text by altering the default font settings in your browser, or you can alternatively use your browser’s zoom functionality, up to 400%. Sage Campus uses responsive design, so changing the zoom level in your browser will reflow the layout of the page: as you zoom in or out, the page will rearrange itself to use your screen space in the best way.

PDFs downloaded from Sage Campus support zoom and magnification. As all PDFs have embedded, selectable text.

Limitations and exceptions: PDFs downloaded from Sage Campus courses currently do not support reflow. A fix for this is on Sage Campus’ roadmap.

Text alternatives for visual content

Navigational images and icons, as well as many images in the content itself, contain useful alternative text. When alt text is available in the content, these is rendered in the interface. If you encounter an image that does not have a text alternative, and you need one, you can request alternative text for specific images by contacting online.accessibility@sagepub.com.

Images that are decorative or incidental are given a ‘null’ alt attribute, so they are properly ignored by screen readers.

Appropriate audio descriptions are provided for videos found in courses published from 2021 onwards.

Limitations and exceptions

  • Some alternative text does not note super- or subscript. A fix for this is on the roadmap.

  • Improvements to the presentation of required form fields are on the roadmap.

Screen reader compatibility

Our site is designed to follow a logical reading order and semantic structure rather than work with any specific screen reader. However, we test our site with the following combinations:

  • JAWS and Chrome

  • NVDA and Firefox

  • VoiceOver and Safari

Specific guidance for hearing impaired users

Video Captions

All videos on Sage Campus have synchronized closed captions. Users can customize the caption text, background, and window colour, as well as the font size, edge style, and family.

Specific guidance for comprehension, memory, problem-solving or attention 

Text-to-speech tools

All content on Sage Campus can be copied and pasted into a text-to-speech tool with no barriers. Many Browsers have in-built text-to-speech tools, such as the read aloud function in Microsoft Edge.  

Reading guidance - PDF

Individual courses cannot be downloaded from the platform, however course resources, video transcripts and course certificates can be downloaded in PDF format. PDFs are partially tagged to be accessible to a keyboard and screen reader. This means that while PDFs are generally navigable and usable for keyboard and screen reader users, some PDFs may present barriers to full comprehension, such as inconsistent alternative text or heading structures. Fixes to these barriers are currently on the accessibility roadmap for Sage Campus.

If you do not have a PDF reader installed on your computer, you can download Adobe Acrobat Reader DC from Adobe.

Limitations and exceptions: alternative text is currently not provided for images in PDFs. A fix for this is currently on the roadmap.

Evaluation and testing methods

The information in this accessibility guide is based on an internal expert evaluation of the Sage Campus platform conducted in August 2022 by Lorna Notsch, Senior Content Analyst at Sage Publishing, IAAP Certified and a Trusted Tester through the Department of Homeland Security.

As well as automated testing and manual evaluation of captions and text alternatives, Lorna worked through the web application on a Windows 10 environment using the most up-to-date version of the JAWS 2022 screen reader with the Chrome browser (Version 106).

Subsequent to this evaluation, the Sage product and user experience teams met to itemise any outstanding accessibility barriers on the site’s accessibility roadmap, the most relevant issues from which are noted in this guide.

Full testing and evaluation criteria are available on the site’s VPAT, which along with the full roadmap is available on request from online.accessibility@sagepub.com.

Ongoing support for accessibility

The Sage Campus team considers accessibility as one of its core design principles. Team members receive regular training on accessibility, and we reference it in job descriptions for new hires.

We work to improve accessibility at each step of the product development process:

  • Requirements for new features contain accessibility specifications that outline the desired keyboard and screen reader interactions.

  • All visual designs are accompanied by a non-visual outline specifying the page’s reading order, semantic structure and landmarks.

  • Developers run automated testing tools to look for obvious accessibility bugs before release.

  • Our quality assurance teams perform automated and manual testing against the accessibility specifications.

  • Product and user experience teams then test the overall accessibility of the experience before release, using a combination of assistive technologies including screen readers (JAWS/Chrome, NVDA/Firefox, VoiceOver/Safari).

  • After major redesigns we commission a third-party evaluation.

How to contact us

If you have any comments, questions, or feedback about the accessibility of Sage Campus, Sage’s accessibility team would love to hear from you. You can contact us at online.accessibility@sagepub.com.