Accessibility audit
We conducted an accessibility audit to check that our service:
- met WCAG accessibility guidelines and was perceivable, operable, understandable and robust
- worked on assistive technology, like screen readers
In the audit, several journeys and 85 pages of the service were tested.
At the end of the user journey through our service, users can choose to download a printable version of the recommendations for their school. This downloadable document opens in a new tab. The audit revealed a few potential issues with this page, including:
colour contrast issues with checkboxes
difficulties navigating back to other parts of the service from this page
We added these issues to our backlog so that we could prioritise fixing them. It prompted us to consider navigation throughout the service, and to consider the design of the printable page.
Usability testing
As well as an accessibility audit, we wanted to test how usable and accessible our service was for real users with access needs, by testing it with them. We enlisted the help of an external team to do this. They ran several user testing sessions, testing how users would complete a journey through our service about creating a digital technology asset register.
In the sessions, we asked users to:
- self-assess a school for digital technology registers, with a scenario so that they would select 'no' for all questions
- find and read the digital registers recommendations
- find and download the asset register template
- find their way back to the recommendations and the landing page
We also probed for feedback on the page footers, the 'share this recommendation' feature and the printable version of their recommendations.
What we learned
Overall, most of our users were able to navigate and complete the end-to-end journey for the scenario we gave them. From observing users' interactions and feedback, the content was mostly well understood and participants found it useful, despite their lack of context on the subject topics. However, the amount of content in some areas of the journey was overwhelming for some. Some terms and vocabulary could have double meanings for users or be ambiguous, for example 'logs' which could be written more plainly as ‘registers’.
The printable version of recommendations and checklist included was clear for some users, and they welcomed having the information in one place. However, some participants found it more difficult to follow the linear structure of the printable version and they found some repetition. Some participants also expected the printable page to be more interactive like the rest of the service.
Prioritising next steps
The accessibility audit and usability testing findings gave us key themes to focus on to make our service even more accessible, including:
- updating our accessibility statement
- making sure the volume of content at any stage in the journey is not overwhelming
- making sure users can navigate confidently throughout the service, including navigating back to a journey when they’ve opened a printable resource
- making sure printable versions we offer users are clearly designed and easy to print
- using the plainest language, we can and avoiding language like ‘log’ which might pose issues for users with English as an additional language
For each of these themes, we worked together to identify and prioritise changes to solve the issues. We:
- ran workshops bringing designers, developers and business analysts together to understand the problems and changes needed
- ideated different solutions
- agreed the best solution
- worked with our product manager to add these tasks into our backlog and prioritise them
We’ve now redesigned the printable version of recommendations for users. We’ve also improved navigation through the service.
The accessibility audit and usability helped to prompt our thinking about the design of our service overall and how we can make it even better. It helped to challenge our assumptions and guide the next part of the story of our service, where we’ll start to think about how we can help users track their progress with their recommendations.
