EPIC: Review accessibility guidance

nhsuk / nhsuk-service-manual

Design and build digital services for the NHS. Use the service manual to build consistent, usable services that put people first. Learn from the research and experience of other NHS teams.

https://service-manual.nhs.uk

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EPIC: Review accessibility guidance #1948

Open sarawilcox opened 3 months ago

sarawilcox commented 3 months ago

Our analytics suggest that the accessibility guidance is not well used. Our WCAG 2.2 user research 2024 suggests that some professions (e.g. product and delivery, devs and designers) do not refer routinely or at all to the profession sections.

It would be worth reviewing the accessibility guidance - and how best to present accessibility requirements and best practice across:

the design system
the accessibility guidance
the accessibility checklist Also taking into account cross-gov work on accessibility guidance and resources.

Can we better signpost and integrate the accessibility checklist in the service manual?

Related backlog tickets

anandamaryon1 commented 3 months ago

Also from the 'WCAG 2.2 user research 2024', of the users that had used the per-profession accessibility guidance, they had accessed it when starting their role, as part of onboarding. They had not come back to it since.

Two thoughts:

does this suggest that the accessibility content in general should be more integrated into the design system and content content guide?
is there a distinction between content that is used routinely as a reference and content that is more akin to training or onboarding? Should these be treated differently in the Service Manual?

sarawilcox commented 3 months ago

Also, DigInclusion's report on the accessibility guidance identified that we could add more info on all WCAG 2.1 criteria. For now, we have decided not to do that and only to highlight the 6 new criteria - in addition to design system updates. We do not know if our users will want more detail about all WCAG 2.1 criteria (these are covered in the accessibility checklist anyway) but we suspect this will be too much info for them. Worth exploring as part of the review.

sarawilcox commented 1 month ago

There are also some accessibility resources on NHSE's CoE SharePoint, including some duplicate content.

sarawilcox commented 1 month ago

We will be carry out some user research into people's needs around accessibility guidance, starting June 2024, and how we can better meet those needs in the service manual.