Making HSE digital services inclusive - How we make digital services accessible

As outlined above, we aim to provide inclusive online experiences. One of the ways we achieve this is embedding accessibility into projects from start to finish.

We do this by:

  • building accessibility into every stage of the content lifecycle
  • supporting our team with expertise, tools and training
  • testing through user research with people of diverse abilities and backgrounds
  • doing quality assurance (QA)
  • raising awareness internally and externally

Below are some key stages to ensure our content is accessible. This list is not exhaustive. We work to continually iterate and improve on our methods.

At every stage

Building accessibility into our projects at every stage ensures:

  • we align with our HSE Design Principles and our HSE values of care, compassion, trust and learning
  • more people can access our content
  • we meet tight deadlines - no delays before publication due to inaccessible content
  • we stay within budget - no added costs from the need to redevelop pages due to inaccessible content

Who is responsible

Every team member should think about accessibility. If you feel something is being overlooked, speak up.

Conduct user research

We learn what people need by including them in our research.

We carry out user research by:

  • conducting in-depth user interviews with people from different backgrounds and ranges of abilities
  • running online surveys
  • observing page performance and analytics of keyword searches
  • This is not an exhaustive list.

Who is responsible

The UX Team can launch feedback surveys and carry out in-depth user interviews. The Digital Marketing Team can run reports to understand user journeys, page performance and user behaviour. All teams can assist with desk research and user research by taking notes during observational sessions.

We aim to recruit inclusively for testing. This means we carry out user research with people who don’t speak English as a first language, people with low literacy levels and people who use assistive devices. We are striving to improve this all the time.

Follow our content guidelines

We write in plain English so our content is easy to understand. We aim for a reading age of 9.

The Content Team uses the Content Style Guide and the A to Z of Writing to ensure they are writing in plain English.

Structure your content

It’s important to structure your content before you publish it. This makes it easier for everyone, especially users of assistive technologies, to scan your content.

Contact the Content Team to access these guidelines: digital@hse.ie.

Who is responsible

Content designers and anyone who is creating content that will be published on any HSE digital channel.

Get familiar with different assistive technologies

There are many different types of assistive technologies used to access content online.

Some examples include:

  • screen readers
  • screen magnifiers
  • speech recognition software
  • braille inputs and switch controls

Becoming familiar with assistive technologies helps you understand how to create better online experiences. It gives you an insight into how different users access our content and move through our sites.

Who is responsible

Anyone on the team working on design (Content, UX, UI, Development). Anyone creating or publishing content on any HSE digital channel will also find it useful. Anyone creating or publishing videos, webpages and accessible PDFs.

Test and test again

Anything that will be published to the website should be tested for accessibility issues before going live. Auditing using assistive technologies is the best way to find the most amount of errors before going live.

Accessibility audits can be carried out within your team, in-house, if your team has the required skills. It is also possible to outsource accessibility audits to external companies. Accessibility audits should include automated and manual tests. They should be carried out throughout all phases of your project.

Who is responsible

Usually, the UX Team can assist with testing.

Roles by team:

  • UX - documenting in Figma, providing fixes as annotations to share with the development team. Testing with different assistive technologies in development environments
  • Content - reviewing content in QA to ensure it meets content guidelines
  • Developers - using third-party plugins to review code and show errors. Developers might use assistive technologies to review pages in development environments
  • UX and Content - QAs with live components and pages or development environments
  • external experts - testing with native assistive technology users

Different types of audits to conduct

We carry out quarterly audits of our online experiences. We use a combination of manual and automated testing techniques.

Manual audits

The most accurate results will come from manual accessibility testing. This involves using assistive technologies to access and audit content on individual pages. Manual testing cannot audit as many pages as automated tests. It requires some initial training to carry out the audit.

We conduct manual tests on different types of screen readers, such as:

  • Non-Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) on PC
  • VoiceOver (VO) on iOS devices
  • TalkBack on Android

We also test in different browser environments, such as:

  • Chrome
  • Firefox
  • Safari

Pros: it catches the most amount of errors.

Cons: it takes more time and less pages can be tested.

Automated audits

Automated accessibility testing involves automated tools. They can review and test a larger sample of pages (even an entire website). But, they do not detect as many errors as manual tests do. Automated test results may highlight issues that need a manual review.

Pros: a much larger number of pages can be tested.

Cons: it detects less than half of the amount of potential issues present.

There are many automated testing tools available. Within the HSE Digital Team, we use Siteimprove, AxeDev Monitor and Lighthouse. There are free versions as Chrome browser extensions for all of these tools.

Who is responsible

Usually, the UX Team will carry out audits with assistance from other teams, if necessary.