The World Wide Web is designed to work for all people, regardless of language, location or ability. The Internet is also a tool that removes the barriers to communication and interaction that many people face in the physical world.
By "web accessibility" we mean the existence of instant information and communication that is available to all people. When a website meets this goal, then it is accessible to people with different hearing, movement, vision and cognition. It is a fact that poorly designed websites, applications, technologies or tools can create barriers and prevent people from using the Internet.
Accessibility must therefore be a necessary process for both developers and the organizations themselves who want to create high quality websites thus providing access to their products and services to all visitors to their site.
The Institute for Mediterranean Studies (hereinafter IMS) of the Foundation for Research & Technology — Hellas (FORTH) is committed to a policy of open and equal opportunity for all and makes every effort to make the relevant website www.ims.forth.gr accessible to people with disabilities (including those with problems of vision, hearing, cognitive and motor function), always in accordance with the provisions of law 4591/2019 (Government Gazette 19A '12-02-2019, Correction of Errors in Government Gazette 47A' 13-03-2019) "Transposition into Greek law: a) of Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016 on the accessibility of websites and applications for mobile devices of public sector organizations and b) of Article 1 of Council Directive (EU) 2017/2455 of 5 December 2017. " incorporating in the national legal order the Directive (EU) 2016/2012. Therefore, the commitment of IMS is to create a website with easy access to as many visitors as possible, regardless of the physical abilities of each user or the technology at his disposal. In this context, the organization has invested significant resources, so that its website is easier to use and accessible to people with disabilities based on the belief that everyone has the right to live with dignity, equality, comfort and independence.
This declaration of accessibility applies to the main website of IMS: www.ims.forth.gr.
Compliance status
a) This Website was created with a Responsive Design approach thus giving the flexibility to be optimally displayed and to be fully accessible from any device, adapting its content to any screen size thus offering a good experience to its user.
b) The IMS Website expects to meet or exceed the requirements and the Internet Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and the Web Site Content Accessibility Guidelines AA (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA Success Criteria). This Website also partially complies with the applicable WCAG 2.1 standard single (A) and double A (AA) level success criteria.
Disclaimer / Inaccessible content
IMS continues its efforts to continuously improve the accessibility of the website and its services with the belief that it is our collective ethical obligation to allow seamless, accessible and unhindered use for all.
Despite our efforts to make all pages and content of the IMS Website fully accessible, some content may not be fully adapted to the strictest accessibility standards. This may be due to the fact that the most appropriate technological solution has not been found or identified.
Preparation of this accessibility declaration
This statement was prepared on 10/12/2021.
The actual assessment of the site's compliance with the requirements of Directive (EU) 2016/2102 was performed using the following tools:
- scanned with the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool by WebAIM
- scanned with the Total Validator tool
- scanned with the Siteimprove Accessibility Checker
- scanned with ARC Toolkit
- scanned with the IBM Accessibility Toolkit
- self-assessment conducted by experts at ITE - Institute of Computer Science (HCI Lab) and fixing specific issues (as far as possible) to increase content that is accessible to people with disabilities.
Last revision of the statement on 28/12/2021.
Feedback and contact details
According to the provisions of art. 10 law 4591/2019, every interested party has the right to submit feedback or a request for information regarding the compliance situation or a request for missing information (see par. 3 art. 2 and art. 5 n. 4591/2019)).
At the Institute for Mediterranean Studies the above are submitted with a relevant application of the interested party through the digital requests service of the IMS website https://www.ims.forth.gr/en/contact or via email at info@ims.forth.gr
Execution procedure
The Institute for Mediterranean Studies responds to the interested party in an appropriate way.
In case of unsatisfactory response to the information or to the requests of art. competent institutional authorities, such as by submitting a relevant report to the Ombudsman (www.synigoros.gr) using the following e-mail address: press@synigoros.gr