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What Do Accessibility Regulations Mean For Me?AARON GUMBS CE Consulting Manager

Copyright © 2020 QUANTIQ Technology. All Rights Reserved.

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Throughout the past two years, accessibility has been a major theme for my workshops, particularly as regulations for previously delivered digital services are coming into force very soon. Microsoft, alongside other digital providers, have invested in new features that accommodate accessibility which we will touch on later.

The UK Government released the ‘Public Sector Bodies (Website and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018’ in the September of 2018, and whilst they’ve been around for almost 2 years, they do not come into force for some implementations until 23rd September 2020*.

You may be surprised to hear that through personal experience, accessibility can often be an after-thought, much like tiered levels of consent were prior to GDPR coming into force. This not only needs to change for regulation purposes, but also to create an inclusive environment for all service users.

*accurate as of 3rd August 2020.

The RegulationsThe ‘Public Sector Bodies (Website and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018’ aim to ensure that all users receive a functional experience when visiting a new or existing digital service, regardless of disabilities or impairments an individual may have. Naturally, as digital services are visual, the focus on improving these is primarily through wider accessibility for those with visual impairments or those with limited movement.

For clarity, ‘services’ includes any material that is made digitally available to a service user, including (but not limited to) websites and apps, regardless of functionality.

Essentially, accessibility features should be considered as a part of normal function for a website, and for those requiring good accessibility features of a website, this can be the difference between using your website in a normal way or being left frustrated and reminded of their inability to complete a task that most individuals find easy, which is not a feeling anyone wants to provide their service users. This may have further negative impacts on the brand too.

Although the current accessibility regulations are only enforced for the public sector, every organisation that provides digital services should strive to be compliant with the international WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards to ensure that all of your users receive a desirable experience when using their services. This is much simpler than it may seem for anyone with the technical ability, and we’ll discuss ways that this can be improved later on.

It’s also worth noting that there are legal exceptions for a digital service not being made accessible, primarily by providing the ability to receive an alternative accessible format, or if the adjustment to an existing service isn’t considered ‘reasonable’. These should truly be kept as exceptions though, and shouldn’t be used as a reason to not deliver in the future.

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Importance to the Service User

Project Considerations

Whilst the majority of web users can navigate the web without any adjustments to their settings, either physical or digital, there is a large number of individuals that require additional assistance. For digital services, this can often be:

To ensure the correct level of assessment is made into understanding how much investment needs to be made into accessibility, there are a few critical factors that need to be considered by an organisation.

These are extremely serious issues for all of us, but the great news is that the mechanisms to help individuals that utilise assistive technology are already available with a few simple additions to the code written or generated for the digital service.

For example, when building websites, making use of ‘alt’, ‘tab-index’, ‘aria-labels’ attributes in HTML, and utilising third party tools that help you identify the difference in colour contrasts completes half of the work for you!

• Using a screen reader to provide an audio narrative of a digital service, or even a machine that generates brail for it for those that face challenges with their eyesight.

• Tweaking contrasts of the screen to ensure that individual elements can be distinguished correctly if the individual is colour blind.

• Sole use of a keyboard to tab through elements with limited mouse/trackpad usage due to mobility issues or amputation.

1. Cost of implementation – UK Government guidelines highlight that if the cost of delivering the accessibility features is considered ‘unreasonable’ in context of the benefit, then this may be an exception. An alternative to this would be to provide a separate source of literature that is accessible, such as large-print.

2. Control over the code – Does your organisation own the implementation and IP of the system being reviewed? If so, it may be worth speaking to a partner that can assist.

3.Thirdpartycontentflexibility – If you don’t own the IP, the third party may already offer features to make your implementation accessible.

4. Audience – The regulations may be targeted towards the public sector, but we shouldn’t assume that individuals requiring accessible functionality only use public sector websites. You should consider your audience and whether any are likely to use functionality. For example, with an internal portal, you may know that 27% of your workforce have visual impairments, and therefore providing accessible features instead of an alternative piece of literature would be beneficial for their use of the service in business processes, but also for inclusion purposes.

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What can I do now?In the first instance, we would recommend that accessibility audits are carried out by the organisation internally to evaluate the breadth and depth of the digital services provided, alongside the business processes that may be impacted by accessibility decisions.

Once this has been completed, we would advise use of accessibility tools that are available online to assess the current status of the digital service. ‘Accessibility Insights’ by Microsoft is a fantastic start, and can run reports for your whole service to ensure compliance.

Only then will you know the true cost of how much investment is needed to ensure a reasonable effort at implementing accessibility features.

QUANTIQ’s OfferingWith QUANTIQ spanning the whole Microsoft cloud, we endeavour to ensure that our clients’ needs will be met for accessible functionality in every project we deliver where there is a requirement for it. These features are driven entirely by the client as each will have different needs based on their audience and sector, and whilst there’s no template for delivering accessibility, we have highly skilled delivery consultants that can achieve this for you.

Within the Microsoft cloud, accessibility is achieved in different ways depending on the product. For example, Power Apps Portals often require bespoke HTML to be written into the Liquid Web Templates for delivery, whilst a Power Apps Canvas app simply requires the hex values in a click-and-configure style interface in order to change colours and the contrast difference between two.

We have many consultants that have experience in these products, and if you need any assistance with your Microsoft cloud delivery, for accessibility or otherwise, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@quantiq.com.

LinksUK Gov Regulations: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accessibility-requirements-for-public-sector-websites-and-apps

Accessibility Insights by Microsoft: https://accessibilityinsights.io/

WCAG 2.1: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/