Evidently Cochrane accessibility upgrade
From September 2020, the UK Government requires all public sector websites to meet accessibility regulations.
All UK public sector website providers must consider ‘reasonable adjustments’ for disabled people.
Evidently Cochrane provides accessible, usable summaries of new Cochrane evidence, so it’s important that they meet these new standards.
Evidently Cochrane provides accessible, usable summaries of important new Cochrane evidence.
The Challenge
Our client comissioned an an-depth Accessibility analysis from Human Computer Interaction students at UCL. They presented a detailed breakdown of actions needed to optimise the site for all users, especially those using assistive technologies to access the web.
The website was built using a purchased WordPress Theme. These can present difficulties for developers modifying them.
We improved text and link contrast, layout, semantic structure and support for screen readers and keyboard-only browsing.
The Solution
The detailed report gave us a great starting point, and we drew up a framework to guide the work.
Bugbears
- Image ALT tags: the WordPress them was doing weird things here (see above) so we had to regenerate them from Title data
- Infographics: be careful that you provide a text alternative whenever you use them
- “Click here” and “Read more”, when used as a link, are particularly unhelpful to screen reader users, who often want to jump from link to link on a page. All links should be made with text that, on its own, tells the user something helpful about what they are going to get from the link.
- The never-ending piece of string: You can always do more
- Training the client in how to adhere to accessibility practice in writing and editing content.
We tested the updated site against parameters established at the start, using code validators and screen readers.
An added benefit of this work is that it makes the site more user-friendly for everyone, not just those needing assistive technologies. We hope you agree!
