The site had an overlay bar that appeared at the bottom of the screen to encourage users to sign up for email guidance. The bar persisted in this position until the user interacted with it by either selecting ‘Sign up here’ or ‘Not now’.
Our accessibility audit identified that there were issues with the bar. It did not have a heading to distinguish it from other content for screen reader users and the links were not descriptive enough.
We investigated redesigning the bar to make it more accessible. However, the changes needed would have caused the height of the bar to increase. This would have a significant impact, particularly on mobile users, as it would cover even more of the content on the page.
We also spoke to teams managing Get Into Teaching support services. They told us that it was confusing for users to see this persistent bar about email guidance on pages relating to other support services, such as events and advisers.
We analysed the data on how many people were signing up to email guidance through this persistent bar compared with those signing up through other places on the website. The proportion signing up through the persistent bar was relatively small. We therefore decided to remove the bar altogether and to focus on promoting the email guidance in other ways.