How we’re improving the accessibility of our website
By: Sonia Turcotte
Tags: UX, Accessibility

This blog was co-authored by Sonia Turcotte and Adam Smith from the customer journey team at Citizens Advice.

At Citizens Advice, we give people the knowledge and confidence they need to find their way forward — whoever they are, and whatever their problem. With millions of visits to our website every year — over 34.5 million in 2019–20 — and people relying on remote advice now more than ever, we’re working to make sure our website is clear and easy to use for everyone.

New accessibility legislation for public sector bodies came into effect on 23 September 2020. The regulations state public sector bodies must make their website or mobile app more accessible. You can read more about the regulations on GOV.UK.

Our latest impact report found that of the people we help, 4 in 10 report having a long-term health condition or disability. It’s our responsibility as an organisation to make sure we’re meeting the needs of everyone we help. That’s why we’re committed to meeting the requirements set out in this legislation, as just one part of our work to reach as many people who need our help as possible. When we say we’re for everyone, we mean it.

Doing an accessibility review

To start this work, we needed a better understanding of how we were doing on digital accessibility, so we planned a full accessibility audit of the public website.

The website was tested by designers Sonia and Shakira, following recommended practice from W3C. You can read the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) on the W3C website.

First, we gathered a representative sample of web pages, forms and interactive elements, and crucial functionality like the location switcher and webchat. Next, we tested each web page against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (known as WCAG 2.1), using a range of automated tools and manual checks.

The spreadsheet we used for the accessibility audit

Finally, we wrote a report for our team that outlined any accessibility issues and recommended how to fix them. The report also emphasised the importance of ongoing testing and research, including regular testing with disabled users.

After testing the public site, designers Sonia and Minnie also reviewed our adviser-only website, AdviserNet. As the websites are quite similar, we were able to conduct a smaller review, focusing on testing any templates that were different to the public site.

None of us were accessibility experts when we did this work, so it was a big learning curve, but it was also a very valuable experience. While we had previous experience designing for accessibility, doing the audit gave us a much richer understanding of the different requirements and why they’re important.

This meant we could share that knowledge with the rest of the team and other parts of the organisation. Accessibility isn’t one person’s responsibility and it’s important everyone understands how to design and build services and products that are accessible.

Sharing our work

As part of the new legislation, public sector bodies are required to publish an accessibility statement that explains:

how accessible their website is

how to request information in a different format

which bits of the website don’t meet the accessibility regulations

how they plan to fix accessibility issues

You can read our accessibility statement on our website.

What’s next

We’re moving to a new content management system which gives us more freedom to respond to user needs and provide relevant, good quality advice.

Part of this work includes redesigning the website, with accessibility as our main focus. We are getting an external audit of the new website and regularly testing with a wide range of users. We’re committed to making sure our advice is available to as many people as possible.

We’ll write about this work in more detail in future blog posts.