Accessibility
Lots of information about accessibility and how we should deal with it is already available on other websites or across various internal documents.
General resources
Some starting points:
- Making your service accessible: an introduction (Service Manual)
- Guidance and tools for digital accessibility (GOV.UK guidance)
- Building accessible services (The GDS Way)
- Guidance for your job role (DWP Accessibility Manual)
- Resources for Accessibility (internal Word doc)
Testing tools and processes
General guidance: Testing for accessibility (Service Manual).
The Service Manual talks about four types of testing: automated testing, manual testing, testing with assistive technologies and including people with access needs in user research.
Automated testing
Automated testing tools (choose one):
- Axe (the team uses jest-axe for continuous integration as well as html-validate)
- WAVE
- ARC Toolkit
- SiteImprove
- browser accessibility reports (for example, Lighthouse in Chrome’s devtools)
Manual testing
How to use accessibility acceptance criteria for the GOV.UK Design System.
Checklists for basic and easier checks (choose one):
- Doing a basic accessibility check if you cannot do a detailed one (GOV.UK guidance)
- Easy Checks (W3C)
- How to do a quick accessibility review (internal Word doc)
Checklists for more involved checks (choose one):
Testing with assistive technologies (AT)
General guidance: Testing with assistive technologies (Service Manual).
If you don’t have access to the AT listed in the Service Manual, test with these at a minimum:
- any desktop screen reader
- any mobile screen reader
- any screen magnifier
- any speech recognition software / voice control tool
You can get access to most AT via Assistiv Labs and BrowserStack.
What neither BrowserStack supports nor Assistiv Labs support are:
- VoiceOver on iOS - You have to use your work phone for testing
- Dragon (or any other voice control tool) - You have to ask Anika to test (or hope for the Accessibility Lab to re-open)
Record results on a copy of our accessibility testing spreadsheet.
User Research
General guidance: Running research sessions with disabled people (Service Manual).
Not the same as user research but very useful is a cognitive walkthrough with the help of our accessibility personas.
Accessibility in the GOV.UK Design System
Specific to the GOV.UK Design System team: