The government tax department has entered into an agreement which will last for the next two years and enable service teams to access various testing services and then identify issues
HM Revenue and Customs has put in place a six-figure deal to provide a comprehensive range of “accessibility audits” of the department’s systems and services.
On 1 April, the tax agency entered into a two-year deal with the Digital Accessibility Centre – a non-profit organisation which specialises in supporting organisations in delivering services that meet best practice and comply with regulations.
The text of the contract – which is valued at £360,000, inclusive of VAT – states that HMRC intends that the deal will ensure “compliance with Government Service Standards for designing digital services to meet user needs”.
“The purpose of the accessibility standards is to ensure that various technologies, such as magnifiers and onscreen reader and assistive settings, work with government systems/pages,” the commercial document adds.
The document outlines a range of services that will be delivered via the deal, beginning with the provision of “conformance testing through accessibility audits across websites, digital services, web applications, and mobile applications”. This testing will help in “identifying barriers that may affect users with disabilities”.
These examinations of the accessibility of the public services will include “semi-automated – but mostly manual testing – of individual pages, along defined user journeys”.
Related content
- ‘Being accessible isn’t a badge of honour; it’s the minimum we should be doing’
- Is the public sector ready for the Web Accessibility Directive?
- DDaT profession: Government maps out digital accessibility career
The appointed supplier will need to ensure testing is delivered against the top-tier metrics and methods set out in the latest iteration of the main global accessibility guidelines: Levels A and AA of version 2.2 of the WCAG standards.
The contract adds: “The supplier must be able to conduct conformance testing against perform assistive technology compatibility testing and a usability review involving experienced testers, with a range of disabilities.”
Having overseen testing exercises, the non-profit outfit will then be expected to “deliver detailed, actionable reports outlining and evidencing non-conformances, recommended fixes, and priority levels, mapped to the relevant WCAG 2.2 success criteria”.
These reports “should be clear, well-structured, and suitable for both technical and non-technical stakeholders”, and should “document any usability issues or deviations from GDS design patterns which may cause issues for users of the digital service”.
Where issues have been identified, the Digital Accessibility Centre will be expected to “provide ongoing support through re-testing of remediated areas and consultation on accessibility best practices”.
The contract adds that HMRC was seeking to appoint a provider that could provide personnel with “extensive experience of auditing government services for accessibility; [who] are familiar with the service standard and GOV.UK design patterns; provide clear and actionable reports; [and] can help us prioritise issues and provide support in fixing them”.
Monitoring compliance
Public sector bodies and the citizen services they offer have been subject to formal accessibility requirements since 2018. This entails complying with the measures set out in the latest version of the globally agreed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) – which were most recently updated in late 2024.
To help keep tabs on overall progress in complying with these demands, GDS is engaged in “monitoring a sample of public sector websites and mobile apps”.
Research based on this monitoring published in 2022 found that, at the time, about 99% of public sector websites contained accessibility issues representing not only a breach of regulatory requirements, but also a potential problem for users with physical or cognitive impairments.
The WCAG standards ask services to consider the challenges faced by users with issues including impaired vision or hearing, motor difficulties, and learning disabilities. According to GDS, these conditions may mean that a user typically accesses government services via the use of assistive technologies such as a “screen reader… braille display or screen magnifier… special mouse, speech recognition software or on-screen keyboard emulator”.
Public services should thus be tested to ensure full functionality via such tools – a process which can be supported by a dedicated “accessibility empathy hub”, which aims to replicate the kinds of challenges faced by users with disabilities. GDS set up such a facility for use across government in 2018, and HMRC has now created its own set of hubs.
“HMRC has set up Accessibility Empathy Hubs to demonstrate the barriers that disabled people can face,” says a departmental GOV.UK site dedicated to software engineering. “We want to inspire you to think about the role you play in a new, more accessible way. Even if you are not involved in the development of digital services or websites, you can still help improve the accessibility of documents that we create and share. You can use the Accessibility Empathy Hub to gain an insight into the experiences of users with access needs.”
