Accessible by Design

We exist to help remove barriers to arts and culture.

With almost 1 in 4 people having a permanent disability, many people are excluded before they even arrive at your venue, through inaccessible websites and ticket buying processes.

We partner with venues, theatres, museums, galleries and cultural organisations and their technology partners to design, build and maintain accessible websites, applications, and digital communications.

The name Accessible by Design stems from the belief that accessibility should consistently be considered from the outset of any work, as part of business as usual, rather than accessibility being treated as a feature, an add-on, or ‘patched-in’ retrospectively.

Rather than manually assessing every page of a website, we’ll take a representative sample of key user journeys to ensure that users can navigate and complete tasks independently from start to finish.

It’s usually not worth assessing every single page of a website since the website uses a set of templated pages. An outline of the scope requirements for the accessibility audit is included in the following page of this document.

We use a mix of automated scanning and manual testing to ensure that we identify all existing accessibility issues.

We put together an issue log detailing every issue observed. This includes the following:

We’ll also put together a summary report with an executive summary, level of compliance and general guidance for improving digital accessibility.

Some issues will be content related, others will require updates to your website’s code. Following the audit, we’ll present the findings and recommendations based on issues observed and what can be done to fix them.

Once issues have been resolved, we’ll re-test any issues to validate the fix.

Inclusive Usability studies

Your website can meet WCAG standards while still presenting usability issues.

We believe that gaining user feedback is paramount to creating a truly inclusive user experience. Through observed usability studies we can identify accessibility and usability issues in the structure, design and content of your website and put together a prioritised plan for improving usability and accessibility for everyone.

Methodology

We typically follow the ‘speak aloud’ method asking users to complete a series of tasks on a Zoom call and talking through what they expect to find and why. We’ll invite participants to Zoom calls on a one-to-one basis.

We also work with non-verbal participants and put together a guided test to gain feedback along with screen and web-cam recordings.

We ask users to screenshare and share their web cam so that we can identify where users may face barriers. This also allows us to identify any pauses or areas that cause confusion and allows further querying to identify what has caused issues and why.

Participant recruitment

We work with a network of usability testing participants with a diverse range of access requirements including blind and visually impaired, d/Deaf, neurodivergent and Disabled users.

We will put in place any access requirements to facilitate the usability study including booking BSL interpreters, captioners and access workers.

We can also work to recruit participants directly from your mailing list, audiences or prospective students to ensure that the participants that take part are representative of your user base.

Test plan

We’ll work with you to put together a test plan that represents your users’ needs and your business objectives to ensure that your website is working as it should do for everyone.

We’ll identify key scenarios and ask users to complete those in a non-leading manner.

This will reflect actual tasks and challenges that users may encounter, providing actionable feedback.

Issue log & report

Following the usability study, we’ll put together an issue log and summary report.

The issue log will detail the following:

·  Issue description

·  Technology being used (browser, assistive tech, device type etc)

·  Ease of task (scored 1-5)

·  WCAG criteria (where relevant)

·  Compliance status (where relevant)

·  Evidence (video excerpt, audio output or code example)

·  Suggested remediation

·  Priority (Minor, Moderate, Serious or Critical)

We’ll also put together a summary report documenting how the study was conducted along with an overall report on usability and accessibility.

While we don’t do website development, following an audit, we can put you in touch with partners who can work through the remedial development work with you.

team@accessiblebydesign.co.uk

www.accessiblebydesign.co.uk