“Design for everyone”: A visit to Gov. UK’s Accessibility Lab
Written by Lauren Allen
Three of the principles for successful service design resonated with me when visiting the team’s accessibility lab. This is a hub of devices that can be used to test the usability of a webpage for those with accessibility needs.
These were, ‘Starting with user needs’, ‘Do the hard work to make it simple’ and ‘This is for everyone’.
The lab includes laptops, iphones, ipads, and android devices with various screen readers, voice controls and methods of replicating disability e.g. vision impairment goggles to test with.
How does this testing help to deliver effective digital services?
Principle 1. Start with user needs
The Gov.UK Pay team, have been using the Empathy Lab to develop the product for customers to make payments easily, that suits the needs of many potential users! Considering the needs of the 12 million people in the UK with some kind of hearing loss, 6.4 million with dyslexia, 10 million with arthritis, 2 million with significant sight loss, and many more people living with disabilities, Gov.UK Pay is a payment platform that is designed to cater to individual needs.
Principle 4. Do the hard work to make it simple
FACT: According to… well… me… laziness is the biggest cause of rubbish services.
It takes time to test with users; to test with as many potential user groups as possible, to test with a representative population of each user group (a population of a decent enough size) so that findings can be generalised, and to test with different devices to ensure a webpage or app is suitable for mobile devices, and devices using accessibility programmes. On top of this, we have to make changes from the feedback our users give us, and then test again, until we have a service that suits users’ needs, and does the thing that we set out to achieve!
However, if we look at the bigger picture, not testing actually takes a LOT longer, and is far more costly in the long run. If we don’t test, we risk developing the wrong thing, that doesn’t suit user needs. In 6 months’ time when we recognise that the thing was a failure, we then have to review, and revisit the work. It’s always better to fail fast, and to test early will make sure that that happens!
A good service takes the time to speak to its users and make sure their needs have been understood, so that the service is suitable for the people that will actually confront it day-to-day! (And that will complain to us if that confrontation is hostile or unsuccessful).
Principle 6. This is for everyone
Going back to my previous points, it is important to be inclusive of all users, including those that have additional needs surrounding accessibility. Not only are we here to provide good services for our residents/users, but we have a legal obligation to do so!
Delivering a service that is inaccessible and doesn’t meet necessary requirements goes against legislation. And the price to pay is only getting steeper as accessibility legislation is evolving and the monitoring of websites for accessibility is being tightened by central government this year.
Gov.UK Pay have developed a service using their accessibility lab to ensure that they have a payment screen that fully abides by legislation, and is accessible to their various users.
NELC is currently working with the Gov.UK Pay team to discover what needs to be done to make Gov.UK Pay more attractive for Local Authorities, and what the business case is for using Gov.UK Pay as a payment platform.
A major benefit of Gov.UK Pay, evidenced by this piece of work, is that the platform has been designed around users, putting users first, and considering all users.
