Accessibility at Elsevier 

At Elsevier, accessibility is a key part of how we support researchers, librarians, and students around the world. We are committed to creating digital experiences that are inclusive and usable for everyone, including people with disabilities. You can read more about our company-wide approach to accessibility in Elsevier’s Accessibility Policy. 

We are committed to ensuring that our products comply with accessibility regulations worldwide. To find out about the improvements we are making, please refer to our statements on the European Accessibility Act and Americans with Disabilities Act Title II update.

ScienceDirect accessibility compliance 

WCAG 2.2 level AA 

ScienceDirect aspires to meet all guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 and the U.S. Section 508 Standards of the Federal Rehabilitation Act, as well as similar standards enacted by countries around the globe. 

For a detailed review of how ScienceDirect supports each of the WCAG 2.2 level AA and Section 508 criteria, please refer to our accessibility conformance report (ACR). This report (also sometimes known as “VPAT”) was last updated in June 2025. To find out about our latest improvements, please refer to our list of recent accessibility updates. 

European Accessibility Act (EAA) 

ScienceDirect is also committed to full compliance with the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which came into force on June 28th 2025. Please refer to our dedicated page on ScienceDirect and the EAA to find out more about the accessibility improvements we made to our platform and content in relation to ensure EAA compliance.  

Accessibility support and feedback

• To report any accessibility issue or for accessibility support, please contact accessibility@elsevier.com.
• If you require electronic files for a student or staff member with a disability, you may use the AccessText Network or the Elsevier Disability Request Form to request a file. Most requests are fulfilled same day.

Summary of ScienceDirect Accessibility Features

Reading options

Most content on ScienceDirect is available in both HTML and PDF format. Books published from June 2025 onward, as well as a growing selection of older titles, are also available in ePub format – the most accessible format for digital reading.

Detailed accessibility features

Image descriptions and multimedia

• User interface images have alternative text descriptions to convey the meaning of an image to screen readers.
• Inline content figures are accompanied by a text caption and in some cases meaningful descriptive text in the adjacent body text.
• Image descriptions (alt text) are provided for all books published from June 2025 onward, as well as a growing selection of older titles, across PDF, HTML, and ePUB formats. 
• Audio and video content in books includes closed captions, audio descriptions for silent videos, and transcripts rendered within AblePlayer, a media player designed for accessibility. 

Clear Navigation

• Pages are well structured using headings, landmarks and lists which allow users of assistive technology to easily jump around pages.
• Global navigation links are consistent across pages and enable users to quickly and easily understand the layout of the site.
• Links are named appropriately and include meaningful information about the purpose of the link.
• Pages have unique and descriptive page titles which help with orientation, tabbed browsing and bookmarking.
• Readers can skip between sections on all views, using the outline on the HTML page or the Enhanced Reader view or using the table of contents on the PDF.

Keyboard friendly

• Pages provide logical tab order.
• Pages include a visible skip navigation link to skip repetitive elements.
• Interactive elements provide an obvious visible focus state.
• Keyboard-only users can jump directly to a main section in a journal article or book by using the left-side table of contents.
• Controls and features are operable using keyboard only.
• When opening dialog windows and panes, the system places the focus in logical places.

Flexible display

• Magnification: Users can also enlarge pages and text with either browser controls or screen magnification software such as GW Micro’s Windows-Eyes, or ZoomText.
• Reflow: Content can be viewed in either HTML or PDF. The PDF does not reflow but the HTML version does. Content can be zoomed up to 400% with reflow and without causing horizontal scrolling.
• Pages use separate cascading style sheets (CSS), allowing users to more easily customize the display and contrast.
• Pages are usable when style sheets are disabled.

Colors and Contrast

• Text and link color contrast ratio with background is at least 4.5:1 (e.g. dark grey text on white background, and blue links on white background).
• Link text has at least 3:1 contrast with surrounding text (e.g. blue links against surrounding dark grey text).
• Links are identified using color but also use an obvious visual hover and focus state – a color change and either a border or underline.
• Error messages utilize an icon in addition to red color and an alert role to denote the error state.
• Disabled links are shown in gray but also coded with aria-disabled or disabled.
• The best way to adjust color contrast on ScienceDirect is to utilize the accessibility settings in your operating system (e.g. Windows high contrast mode, macOS Dark mode, iOS Dark Mode, Android dark theme) with the benefit that it will therefore apply to all websites you access.

Screen Reader Friendly

• HTML journal articles and book chapters are compatible with screen readers such as JAWS, NVDA and Apple’s VoiceOver.
• Math content is displayed in MathML, which can be spoken by text-to-speech engines, magnified, converted to Braille, and pasted into math equation editors or Microsoft Office documents.
• Article and chapter experimental data are presented in HTML tables with appropriate header markup.
• Pages employ ARIA (Accessibility for Rich Internet Applications) to enhance navigation, orientation and labeling for users of screen readers and other assistive technology.
• PDFs with searchable text are available.

Copying and Printing

• There are some limits on the amount of Elsevier content that can be copied or printed. Please refer to our Terms & Conditions.
• If copying/printing/re-use of the content is not permitted under our Terms & Conditions you may request permission using the Copyright Clearance Center's Rightslink® service or by contacting Elsevier's Global Rights Department at Permissions@elsevier.com.
• Elsevier also supports responsible sharing.

Other accessibility initiatives

• Read more about Elsevier’s Accessibility Policy
• Read more about RELX Group’s Accessibility Policy
• In 2010, Elsevier was awarded the first ever Jisc TechDis award to highlight publishers that improve their business processes to make resources more accessible to people with disabilities
• In 2016, Elsevier was awarded the Accessible Books Consortium Award for Accessible Publishing.
• Elsevier shared the story of best practices in a journal special issue of Learned Publishing: The ScienceDirect accessibility journey: A case study.
• ScienceDirect collaborated with the Big 10 Academic Library Alliance on the Library E-Resource testing.
• ScienceDirect won a bronze Aspire badge in January 2019 for providing a clear and detailed accessibility page with information on e-book features and support.
• ScienceDirect consistently ranks among the top 1% most accessible websites on the internet, according to the annual WebAIM Million accessibility report.