Accessibility revamp of website

I improved the user experience of the University of Kent website by getting full W3C AA compliance on the university website. It was the first university website to achieve ASPIRE Education Gold 100% compliance. The university also won the 2022 UCISA Transformation Award for the provision of accessible content across University digital platforms, of which the website was a key part.

Objectives

  1. Get key parts of the university website fully AA compliant.
  2. Try to understand the actual needs of users better. Very often accessibility compliance can focus on ticking boxes rather than looking at how people interact with the website.
  3. Actions

    Get key parts of the university website fully AA compliant.

    This was no small task because the website had over 100 different contributors. While we could control many parts of the templates, we could not control every aspect. I ran a series of audits across the key parts of the website, to get the main issues which could be fixed through relatively simple HTML or CSS changes. A lot of these issues could be fixed with things liks `aria-label` or using appropriate tags for modals. I was also able to work with people from student services teams to help audit content from across the university website.

    Try to understand the actual needs of users better. Very often accessibility compliance can focus on ticking boxes rather than looking at how people interact with the website.

    A lot of AA compliance can be treated as a box-ticking exercise. But I wanted to understand what makes aspects of a website more accessible, and why. Using tools such as JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver first-hand gives a greater understanding how people use websites. There's quite a learning curve, and it can be quite surprising at first. I was also able to access interviews with a handful of users with vision impairment. This was hugely useful, to gain a real understanding of the often surprising ways people navigate and use websites.

    Summary of actions

    1. Gain a deeper understanding of accessibility compliance and measuring tools.
    2. Gain a better understanding of tools such as JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver.
    3. Interview several people with vision impairment.
    4. Work with people from student services teams to help audit content from across the university website, gain better insight into users’ needs.
    5. Make fixes to HTML, restyle elements to make them bigger, easier to press or read, easier to tab through, etc.

    Lessons learned

    Gaining complete AA compliance on a large website is hard. It’s possible to make structural changes to make sure coloured contrast, buttons, accordions, modals and other components meet the requirements. However much accessibility relies on content.

    The university had well over one hundred content creators. Part of accessibility is therefore educating content creators about the use of alt text for images, using simple language etc.