Accessibility
I help make websites work for everyone. I'm a senior accessibility specialist at the Government Digital Service (GDS).
WCAG refers to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to levels A and AA, unless stated.
Resources
Some accessibility resources I've worked on that you might find useful.
- WCAG 2.2 map by theme
- WCAG success criteria grouped by practical theme in a transport network style map. Also available in French, German, Italian and Spanish.
- WCAG decision tree
- How I test and work out which WCAG 2.2 criterion something might fail on.
- Accessibility testing guide
- A detailed guide on how we test for each Web Content Accessibility Guideline criterion. With Anika Henke, Annie Streater, Derren Wilson, Katherine Badger, Kelly Clarkson, Richard Morton, Keeley Talbot and Amy Wallis.
- Checklists and cheat sheets
- There are many accessibility checklists out there and every auditor has their own way of testing. These unofficial cheat sheets show what works for me.
- WCAG checklist: WCAG distilled into a practical order for testing, covering levels A and AA, with links back to each WCAG page.
- Mobile test guide: How our team applies WCAG to mobile apps.
- Screen reader cheat sheet: Main commands for six screen readers, all on one page.
- Accessibility links: Some of the most useful accessibility links I've collected over time, grouped by topic.
- Presentation: Making services accessible, accessibly
- For Service Design Bristol, January 2025. What good - and bad - accessibility look like, why it can't "just be fixed with AI", ways to build in accessibility from the start, and decoding the accessibility regulations.
- Presentation: Accessibility doesn't have to be hard
- For South West User Experience (SWUX), October 2022. The talk encourages you to bake accessibility into your teams, discussing different mindsets and mythbusting. It then gives practical advice on how to test, and building accessibility into your websites upfront.
- Contrast checker for multiple colours
- Choose multiple colours (spectrum) to check contrast ratios for WCAG.
My work
Accessibility monitoring at Government Digital Service
UK public sector websites and mobile applications need to be accessible and publish an accessibility statement to meet the UK accessibility regulations. Our team monitors this. My main role is to carry out detailed audits, using manual and automated tests, while helping to improve accessibility awareness and knowledge.
Image credit: Stephen McCarthy
- Blog: Accessibility audit of the Met Office app: outcomes and learnings
- How we tested the Met Office app, what came out of it and what we learnt along the way.
- 2024 report
- Our detailed report on what we've tested and our findings over 3 years.
- Blog: How mobile apps undergo accessibility monitoring
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An overview of the challenges we've faced applying WCAG to mobile apps, along with a case study.
- Video: What WCAG 2.2 means for UK public sector websites and apps
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A presentation with Chris Heathcote covering the latest draft Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (version 2.2), and what public sector organisations need to do about them.
- Video: Why would you want to exclude anyone?
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A brief appearance on the Government Digital Service Twitter account to talk about our accessibility work for Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2023. You may need to be signed into Twitter to view this.
- Our monitoring
- How our team monitors websites and apps.
- Blog: websites need to be accessible to be inclusive
- An overview of how the monitoring team tests for accessibility.
Defra accessibility
My accessibility work at the UK's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
- Defra's original accessibility guidance and accessibility checklist, used across the digital team.
- automated accessibility tests using Axe in the Waste Exemptions test suite
- Defra's first accessibility statements on four of its services
I have worked several times with the Digital Accessibility Centre where our services have been tested by people with disabilities. This has given me a deeper understanding of how people use assistive technologies, to inform my testing and design reviews.
For example, people with low vision often look for content on the left hand side of a page. So we've learnt to avoid floating text in the middle or right of the page.
Accessibility of this website
How accessible this website is
This website has been tested against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines v2.2 level AA.
The site meets this standard except for some content which relies on vision.
If you need more information on anything on this website then please contact me through the details at the end of the page.
Non-accessible content
Most of my hobbies are visual, so some content relies on sight. The following steps have been taken to improve its accessibility where possible:
- Art, design and puzzles
- All artistic content has alternative text.
- Mind maps
- Each mind map is summarised with alternative text, with links back to the original courses or course providers where available.
- Games
- The Pandora game relies on vision to complete it. However it includes the following:
- The main character can be highlighted with a spotlight.
- Sound and music are not essential, and can be toggled on and off.
- Hints can be toggled on or off.
- There is no time limit to complete the game.
This statement was last updated on 6 August 2024.