Improving accessibility on digital.gov.bc.ca

In the past two years, digital.gov.bc.ca has welcomed 22,285 unique users from B.C. government employee devices. With over 38,000 BC Public Service employees, it’s great to see such a large portion of our workforce using the website to learn about ways of working.

As an Agile team, we take a continuous improvement approach to website updates and changes. We’re currently working on design changes and used this as an opportunity to review our accessibility score.

While most of the website passed automated testing with a Lighthouse score of 100%, we recognized the importance of accessibility for all. So, we undertook a manual accessibility audit as well.

In British Columbia, 20.5% of people between the ages of 15 and 64 live with a disability. This statistic includes our colleagues. We have a responsibility to ensure that every employee can access digital.gov.bc.ca without barriers, no matter their circumstances.

What automated tests missed

We checked 39 different pages against 56 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 success criteria supported by the government. Fifty-five of those are Level AA guidelines and our manual audit revealed 13 that we weren’t meeting yet. They included:

• Images containing text needed to ensure the text is visible to screen readers, even when it’s reflected in headings further down the page
• Some content blocks resembled tables but didn’t behave as expected, so screen readers couldn’t explain them to users
• Search and browsing also had some issues with navigating by keyboard, a requirement for visitors who don’t use a mouse or touch screen
• Some control labels needed improvement for users browsing with voice control software
• Our handy card filtering tool used in a few places (including the site’s own accessibility homepage) didn’t properly indicate changes made to the content

It was surprising to find that a site scoring so high on automated tests still had some basic issues which could cause real problems for users of assistive technology. Some were context-related and others were usability issues, but without a manual audit these problems would have likely gone unnoticed until they affected someone using the site.

The last guideline tested was a Level AAA requirement: The reading level of government websites should be at a grade 8 level or lower. Though most samples passed, a few were at a grade 10 level and we are working to fix that.

After the audit

We’ve already begun addressing the issues discovered in our audit.

• Alt text was added to existing blog images to enable their description by screen readers
• Tables which appeared OK visually but didn’t meet users’ access needs were rebuilt
• Updates were made in the backend code to address technical issues in functions like search and filtering

The techniques and guidelines we employ in remediation will help to accommodate visitors using a wide variety of assistive technologies. Some changes might seem small, but they make a big difference in how easily users with disabilities can navigate and understand the content on our site.

In addition to these technical fixes, new design choices were implemented to better accommodate all users. We moved towards a softer, more balanced design palette because bright, contrasting colours can cause discomfort, strain and distraction for users with visual impairments, sensitivities or autism spectrum disorder.

Ongoing improvements

Ensuring digital.gov.bc.ca is accessible to all users remains an ongoing effort. Our manual audit highlighted the importance of looking beyond automated tests to find real-world issues that affect users with disabilities.

Making changes for accessibility isn’t a one-time task. We will continue to monitor the site, run regular audits and make ongoing improvements as technology and guidelines evolve. Accessibility isn’t just about meeting requirements – it’s about ensuring that no one gets left behind in the digital space.