HMRC Accessibility Review

To ensure compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act, Cimex performed an accessibility review on tools and content on the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) site.

The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 stipulates that “reasonable efforts must be made to ensure website accessibility.”

The Customer Experience team at Cimex conducted an expert accessibility evaluation of the HM Revenue & Customs web convergence content. This accessibility review focused on approximately 400 pages, covering the main sections and key areas of content. We used assistive software such as JAWS 9.0 for Windows screen reader and ZoomText Extra 9.1 screen magnifier. We also performed manual checks such as the Firefox Developer Toolbar, the Internet Explorer Accessibility Toolbar, W3C HTML and CSS validators.

Solution

The site was browsed manually assessing individual pages that would be involved in popular user journeys. In-depth checks were performed on key template pages such as the homepage, and main section pages. Special attention was paid to pages where the automated crawler had indicated likely accessibility issues. For example, pages containing tables and forms.

Testing with real users

We wanted to make sure that we understood how real users interact with the site too, so we conducted usability testing with disabled users at Cimex’s user testing labs.

We invited 25 disabled users (five blind, five partially sighted, five physically impaired, five suffering from dyslexia, and five cognitive impaired).

Each session began with a pre-session interview which aimed to get insights into:

• the websites that the participants visit the most
• the assistive technologies they use
• their previous experience and expectations with using the HMRC website.

This helped set the scene for the task performance section. During the user testing sessions, participants were asked to perform a list of non-transactional tasks on the website by using several assistive technologies while their interaction and comments were recorded and documented. These assistive technologies included:

• a screen reader
• screen magnification software
• a head pointing device

Whereas the accessibility audit focused on the technical assessment and compliance, the involvement of users in the evaluation helped us identify and better understand the accessibility barriers and difficulties encountered by users with real disabilities on the website.

Although the HMRC web convergence content and tools achieved A WAI compliance, the user testing revealed some practical accessibility barriers (of Level A, AA and AAA) for the several groups of disabilities and assistive technologies. Additionally, 27 issues were identified that contravene various WCAG guidelines (A, AA, and AAA).

Cimex produced a detailed report that outlined all accessibility issues recommendations, along with a shorter version with that covered the quick actionable recommendations that could be immediately implemented.

Published: 19 Apr 2010

Tags: Customer insight