Background
It is the law that public bodies (including us) ensure that their digital systems are accessible. This is dictated by The Public Sector Bodies (Website and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
To meet the government requirements, our systems need to:
- Meet Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) – These are internationally recognised recommendations to ensure websites are accessible.
- Work with assistive technologies.
- Include disabled people in user research.Have an accessibility statement.
The first step in ensuring this, is to audit our digital systems, to see how well they comply.
If you are tendering or procuring a new system. Or an external company is custom building something for us, accessibility should be a consideration from the start. It is easier to build in accessibility, than to go back and fix it.
The government themselves can audit how well we comply.
How to audit
- Decide who is best placed within your team to conduct an audit.
- Conduct an audit of your digital system. If you are unable to conduct a detailed audit, you can conduct a basic one. Remember that not all pages need to be audited, in most cases, testing the “most used” pages, and a random other 10% is enough.
- Make use of automated tools.
- Record your results. This should inform your accessibility statement.
- You should endeavour to get any problems which are discovered resolved. Record how the problems were resolved.
The key functionalities to test are:
- Reading content from top-to-bottom
- Submitting an enquiry
- Watching a video
- Performing a search
- Navigating using the main menu
- Downloading a document
The key tests to carry out are:
- Keyboard Test
- Colour Blindness Test
- Zoom Test
- Text Spacing Test
- Colour Contrast Test
- Screen Reader Test
Here is guidance on how to carry out each test:
- This tests what it's like for someone to use your website using only their keyboard. Navigate through the page from top to bottom using only the keyboard and avoid using your mouse.
- There is further guidance available here.
Colour Blindness Test
- You can emulate colour-blindness using Google Chrome’s Developer Tools.
- Open the Rendering sub-panel by selecting the ... menu in the toolbar.
- Select the More tools option and then Rendering.
- Scroll to the Emulate vision deficiencies item and use the drop-down menu to display the options available for colour vision deficiency emulation.
- This tests how your website works when people with visual impairments adjust their browsers to make content easier to read.
- Adjust your font to largest size it can go and zoom into 400%. Is the content still readable?
Text Spacing Test
- A visitor with a cognitive disability like dyslexia can adjust paragraph and font spacing to make content easier to read. This test aims to replicate the most common settings they use.
- Use this extension to test if the page is still readable with added text spacing.
- Text should not be too similar in colour to its background. This it to make sure it is legible to those with visual impairments.
- Text must have a contrast level of at least 4:5:1 against its background.
- Non-text elements (for example, the borders on a form field) must have a contrast level of at least 3:1 against their background.
- You can use WAVE Web Aim and TPGI Color Contrast Checker.
- The content should work with assistive technologies, like screen readers.
Additional Factors
There are other factors you should consider testing:
How often do you need to audit?
Accessibility audits should be reviewed annually, in line with annual accessibility statement. The Compliance team will manage ensuring reviews are completed.
What to do if you find issues
You should make a plan to fix the issues. If this is an internal system, you should contact the system owner. If it is an external system created or hosted by a 3rd-party, you should get in contact with them directly.