When it comes to their websites, councils should think about embedding accessibility best practices into their processes.
We’ve worked hard to build a new website for our residents. Since its launch in August last year, we’ve gone from strength to strength in making our services accessible for all.
Building an accessible website is an ongoing process. It’s not something than can be achieved overnight, but with planning and coordination it can make a big difference to residents’ online experience.
“Our main objective has been to build a website for everyone”
Like many local authorities, we spent time digesting the accessibility legislation and The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1), analysed our content and reviewed accessibility issues. Our main objective has not just been to meet these standards, but also to build a website for everyone.
A web governance tool allowed us to audit our site and receive a complete inventory and report of our web pages, documents, and more. This outlined all the accessibility issues on our old website and gave us a benchmark from which to start.
When the time came to build our new website, we decided to work with platform specialists Jadu. Our project team was able to run regular tests on the new website templates, homepage widgets and the content that had been migrated. This helped us to understand where accessibility improvements were required.
With WCAG 2.2 around the corner, we are already reviewing our templates and homepage widgets to ensure they continue to be accessible, and update them where required.
It is important that councils think about embedding accessibility best practices into their processes, rather than running a one-off accessibility sprint.
For example, we are now looking to build on our Accessibility Champions group across the council to continue to raise awareness of accessibility. We are also looking to improve our process for requesting documents in alternative formats, and customising our online forms to allow for nominated friends and family to complete online services on behalf of residents.
Five top tips when improving your website
1. Use internal expertise
We tapped into our internal expertise, with our digital team leading the way when it came to web copy and documents being compliant.
2. Review your PDFs
We discovered at the start of the process that we had 3,500 PDFs, many of which had multiple accessibility issues.
We worked with service areas to delete old PDFs or convert them into web pages. While PDFs can be improved, web pages will always be more accessible and require less effort for web editors to keep compliant.
3. Think about colour contrast
Many councils have a corporate style guide that is often used for the website template designs and colour pallet. Be sure to check the colour contrast of your website colour pallet before signing this off for elements of your web design. There are lots of tools available; we found the WebAIM contrast check useful.
4. Test your plug-ins
CookiePro offered us the ability to easily customise our banner and add the source code, and was completely accessible. Not all cookie banners or plug-ins are accessible, so a top tip is to test the product using a free trial to make sure it meets all your requirements.
5. Build accessibility into your council
Train website publishers to recognise basic accessibility issues, and incorporate quick accessibility checks into their processes. Ensure technical teams automate accessibility testing into their deployment process – this can make a big difference.