The background At Government Digital Service (GDS), our mission is to make digital government simpler, clearer and faster for everyone. As part of the GOV.UK One Login programme, we released the GOV.UK ID Check app for iOS and Android last ..read more

Whispers of a new ‘WCAG 2.2’ web accessibility standard flutter between coworkers, within and across the UK government. For teams working on services, the message carries an element of mystery. In any given service, how can areas that need Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 improvements be identified? Accessibility is a serious topic, but it doesn’t need to be daunting. It’s possible to sharpen accessible design skills and have some fun at the same time. So, welcome to the WCAG 2.2 Detective Agency! Let’s get you trained up. This article – or rather, this detective training cours ..read more

My name is Rachel, and I am currently the Service Design Lead at Basildon Council in Essex.  I am also a PhD Researcher in Service Co-design. This means working with service beneficiaries and the workforce to design a service to meet future needs and life events. I live with a disability that affects my immunity and mobility and this has really changed my approach to design (and re-design) of services. Current estimates in England and Wales show that approximately sixteen million people (around 24%) are known to be affected by a disability. However, this figure is reliant on the rates of ..read more

Why produce BSL content?  Around 150,000 people in the UK use British Sign Language (BSL), over half of whom are Deaf.  The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) says ‘BSL involves a combination of hand shapes and movements, lip patterns, facial expressions and shoulder movements. It has its own grammar and is structured in a completely different way from English.’ GCS publishes BSL guidance  The Government Communication Service (GCS) has published guidance on how to plan for and produce British Sign Language (BSL) content (GCS members only) where it is needed to meet ..read more

There’s a new update in town, and it’s a big one! The GOV.UK Design System is ready to help service teams across the UK government meet the latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.2. 2023 was a busy year for our team, as we worked to assess, investigate, implement and test accessibility improvements for our codebase and guidance. We’re excited that all our work can now help service teams across the UK Government make more accessible services in 2024. You can learn What's new in WCAG 2.2 from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), the group that writes, manages ..read more

As part of the Government Digital Service’s (GDS) mission to make digital government accessible for everyone, the GDS accessibility monitoring team has been testing UK public sector mobile applications (apps). This helps us check if they are likely to work well for people with cognitive, hearing, motor and visual disabilities. Apps have a legal requirement to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) along with websites and it’s our role to monitor this. This blog covers how we’ve applied WCAG to mobile, the challenges we’ve faced, and a recent case study. How WCAG applies to mobil ..read more

The Government Digital Service's mission is to make digital government simpler, clearer and faster for everyone. As part of this, GDS works right across government to make the content simple and accessible to all.  The Accessibility monitoring team at GDS audits public sector websites and mobile applications (apps) to see if they meet the accessibility regulations and work with organisations to fix accessibility issues identified in our reports.  We use a mixture of manual and automated tools to do simplified, detailed and mobile audits. We randomly select public sector websites and ..read more

Over 100 participants attended our live session on digital accessibility last November. As communicators, we must take care to make our content as easy to understand and accessible as possible. In order to promote designing accessibility into the system and making people care about accessibility, let’s continue the discussion. PDF and climate change Perhaps the most surprising outcome from the panel was about Carbon Dioxide emission in relation to the use of PDF as a communication medium. The environmental case for HTML over PDF was drawn from research and discussion between Government Digital ..read more

As we approach Global Accessibility Awareness day, I’m reflecting on the accessibility progress we’ve made, here at the Intellectual Property Office UK (IPO). While browsing through the archives, I came across a blog written in 2016 by an IPO colleague. In ‘Researching the realms of accessibility’, Sarah describes the brilliant work undertaken with the Digital Accessibility Centre (DAC) ‘to ensure our services are accessible to all our customers’. This was before my time here, so it was really interesting to read. I’m proud to say that we’ve continued in this good vein with our work on access ..read more

Last week I returned from a bucket list holiday to New York. It was mostly filled with sampling all the great pizza and bagels it has to offer, while trying to fit in a bit of sightseeing too.  One day I took a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art which contains over 2 million works of art! Apparently, it would take over 10 hours to view everything. However, I was not keen for a ‘Night at the Museum’ situation, and I really just wanted a cool tote bag. Walking around the gallery I thought a lot of the pieces were really ‘eye catching’. However, not being an art historian, I did not rea ..read more