Support a consistent interpretation of WCAG across government

[dav-idc]

What

Timeline: Estimated from January 2023 to October 2023 Priority level: 5 – what makes it easier for service teams to do their jobs Category: Processes in the UK government

Potential tasks

• Establish a link with the monitoring body to make sure GOV.UK Frontend meets WCAG 2.2, based on their testing criteria
• Align with and support the WCAG testing guide
• Update the WCAG primer with any new insights we learn from updating GOV.UK Frontend to WCAG 2.2
• Explore opportunities to better share WCAG and WCAG testing knowledge with contributors

Epic lead

Not yet assigned

Why

The GOV.UK Design System is a major layer of frontend infrastructure for many UK government services and websites. The Accessibility Monitoring team assesses services and websites for WCAG compliance, based on a particular interpretation of WCAG. We should therefore align our WCAG interpretations, so that the base layer of GOV.UK Frontend doesn't cause repeated blockers when it comes to accessibility monitoring.

Who needs to work on this

Internal to team: accessibility specialist, product manager

External to team: Accessibility Monitoring team, other accessibility specialists

Who needs to review this

Unknown

Done when

• [ ] Thing to do

[mgifford]

Please also include the great work you are doing in blogging about this work. Your communications is really quite inflential!

[dav-idc]

A small update on the work we've done so far on this lower-priority accessibility activity (prompted by @mgifford 's note):

• Provided input to the Accessibility Monitoring Body on how to add mobile testing guidance to the accessibility testing guide
• Provided input on an upcoming WCAG 2.2 refresh of the content for the CDDO Guidance page, "Doing a basic accessibility check if you cannot do a detailed one"