Transport User Voice July 2024 – Investing in accessibility

05 July 2024

The Transport Focus website

With at least one in five people in the UK having a long-term illness, impairment, or disability, it is key that Transport Focus communicates clearly and ensures access to its information. As part of that commitment, we have been working to ensure our website meets current accessibility standards.

Improving website accessibility involves making content (both text and images) very clear and simple. This ensures that users can navigate it using a screen reader –software that enables users to navigate a website and ‘reads out’ the content.

The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations which came into force in 2018 specify that public sector sites must conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at AA standard. The Guidelines are based on principles and not a specific technology or software and are that your website should be:

  • perceivable
  • operable
  • understandable
  • robust

They detail the need to think about the different ways that people interact with content. For example, users might:

  • Use a keyboard instead of a mouse.
  • Change browser settings to make content easier to read.
  • Use a screen reader to ‘read’ (speak) content out loud.
  • Use a screen magnifier to enlarge part of a screen.
  • Use voice commands to navigate a website.

Following a recent review, the Transport Focus website initially failed to meet this standard. A range of improvements have been implemented that will help the website not only meet these standards, but also comply with the updated WCAG 2.2, released in October 2023.

The website improvements include:

  • Enhanced colour contrast – this means that we ensure that components (for example icons and text) have enough contrast between the colours that are used.
  • No text overlayed onto images – text placed over images is harder to read for visually impaired users, especially at smaller sizes. We have removed and simplified how we use images throughout the site.
  • Descriptive hyperlinks – we’ve made sure that any hyperlinks are logical and descriptive. The reader can get a good idea about the contents of the page just by reading the hyperlink.
  • An enhanced search function in our Publications section.
  • Ensuring videos have subtitles.
  • Logical focus order for screen reader navigation – a logical focus order is important for users who navigate a web page using a keyboard as it allows them to move through the site in order the content is laid out.
  • Adjustable style properties, such as text size and line spacing – the reader can adjust the size and spacing of text to enable them to read content easily.
  • All images now have alternative text describing them for screen reader users.

These changes reflect our commitment to making our website accessible to everyone, regardless of their abilities. We’ll be reviewing the content on our website to ensure that it is accessible and will be working with our staff to adapt and change our content as needed.

Find out more about understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies.

 

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