PROJECTS
Accessibility
The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile
Applications) (No.2) Accessibility Regulations
2018 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/852/
contents/made) came into force on 23 September 2018.
The regulations aim to ensure that all public sector
websites and mobile apps are accessible to all users,
especially those with disabilities. But while the
regulations state that all UK service providers must
consider ‘reasonable adjustments’ for disabled
people, accessibility should simply be about being
inclusive to all users.
At Mixd, we broke new ground in producing a
website with a focus on accessibility for NHS Leeds
Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). One of the
main goals was to develop a website catering to
users with visual and hearing impairments or users
with limited mobility.ICON ACCESSIBILITY
One of the many challenges we faced was providing
descriptive text for icons and defining whether
they were decorative or not. Users without visualimpairment understand the meaning of a button
that has a picture of a magnifying glass on it but
for a visually impaired user, their screen-reader
software will usually only tell them there is a
‘button’ with no further information. At worst it
will skip over it entirely as there is no text to read.
As designers, we often use icons to convey
information and make navigation easier. For
example, a simple calendar ‘icon’ is often used to
distinguish something as an event.
But that’s not always the case as users often find
icons confusing and difficult to understand. This
issue was highlighted with our work for NHS Leeds
CCG, as much of the content we were presenting
was created or developed by medical professionals
with limited design experience. We found they were
looking to make their content visually engaging and
would search online for stock graphics and icons.
Many of the images and icons used were difficult to
interpret. We set about simplifying the content and
started to question the use of supporting graphics
and images.IMPROVE ACCESSIBILITY
FOR PUBLIC SECTOR WEBSITES
Phil Shackleton on how to comply with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites
and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018ACCESSIBILITY