I wasn’t at the digital engagement conference thingummy yesterday but I was keeping an eye on the tweets of people who were talking about it, wondering if anything would strike my eye as being particularly newsworthy, or of significant import.

Having quite a bit of knowledge of accessible web design and in testing against it (feel free to contact me if you want a quote for a site audit, with recommendations for fixes, by the way!), I understand how difficult it is to achieve the triple-A level of accessibility conformance level for WCAG using either version 1.0 (1999) or version 2.0 (2008). I also know that “out-of-the-box” accessibility is impossible: you simply cannot achieve it unless your content editors also know and understand accessibility requirements.

Which was why I was more than a little surprised to see this tweet:

Redbridge AAA-rated for accessibility at the moment, built into the CMS. Immediacy, used by BBC for their Intranet. #digieng@72prufocks

My first reactions were “triple-A? bet it isn’t” and “built into the CMS? now I’m really convinced they don’t understand accessibility”. So, given that Redbridge i seems to be frequently lauded as an example of what local government should be doing, I thought I’d better take a look to see if it is accessible, or if it is likely to present any significant barriers to disabled users.

Whilst not proving the site inaccessible, the fact that the home page failed to validate was probably not a good start for a site which was allegedly claiming triple-A compliance, as it knocks that out of the water straight away…

And the short answer is that it isn’t accessible. Never mind the triple-A level of compliance, it fails to meet the single-A level of compliance for either WCAG 1.0 or WCAG 2.0. And of course if you’re not achieving even the single-A level of conformance:

A Web content developer must satisfy this checkpoint. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document.WCAG 1.0: Priorities

I wouldn’t normally be quite so public about this criticism, but for the fact that Redbridge i appear to be claiming a conformance level they come nowhere near achieving, and for the fact it appears to be frequently held up as an exemplar of what public sector sites should be doing when it is in fact failing the disabled, and it is failing them badly.

It wasn’t even that I had to look far to find problems with Redbridge i. I managed to find enough failures on the home page alone to demonstrate that it does not achieve any WCAG conformance levels. Rather than go through every checkpoint and success criterion though, and the site in great detail (I’m not being paid to do that), I will instead walk you through how Redbridge fails different groups of users — and the checkpoint references appropriate, if you’d like to read on, Macduff…

Redbridge Fails: Visually Impaired Users

Firstly, there are visually impaired users. Now Redbridge does offer some useful things here: the accessibility page offers the user the chance to change the text size across (most of) the site, and to change the screen colours. This is a good thing, and it is something that is certainly not offered as standard across Local Authorities. Redbridge deserve credit for this.

But good intentions only go so far if they are not carried out well. For a start, Redbridge i is very script-heavy. I haven’t gone to the trouble to check whether every single piece of javascript works with every piece of assistive technology, which would mean that practically, and as far as WCAG 2.0 is concerned, this is okay. But if Redbridge want to claim conformance against WCAG 1.0, they need to ensure all functions (or equivalent functions) also work without javascript. And this is not the case.

Here’s an example of the Redbridge Jobs section, surely one of the most important parts of any Local Authority site. Assuming you have javascript enabled, you need simply change the value in the drop-down box, and it will pick up the jobs of this type automatically. Fantastic, eh?

Er, well, no actually. Here we’ve got a failure against WCAG 2.0, at level A — the most basic conformance level — on the homepage itself. Now, being an accessibility sort of a person, finding a level-A failure on the homepage of a site which apparently claims triple-A is not what I would call a good sign.

3.2.2 On Input: Changing the setting of any user interface component does not automatically cause a change of context unless the user has been advised of the behavior before using the component. (Level A) WCAG 2.0: On Input

If you go around changing the content on the page without warning the user that you are going to do so when they don’t do something where they would expect a change of content (button-click or following a link), this is likely to cause problems. So there’s a level A failure at WCAG 2.0 on the home page.

Aha, but what if they aren’t measuring against WCAG 2.0, I hear you ask. Surely as the COI have just recently announced the public sector can now use WCAG 2.0 as a yardstick, the conformance was probably measured against WCAG 1.0?

Don’t worry: it fails that as well. If you don’t have javascript, the little jobs section provides no mechanism by which you can filter jobs by category. Which is obviously in breach of the Priority 1 checkpoint 6.3:

Ensure that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported.WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint 6.3

Without javascript, you cannot use this dropdown box to filter by category. It is useless. And to me, this demonstrates a great lack of awareness about what is actually required for accessibility. There is one simple thing that could be used to fix both the WCAG 1.0 problem and the WCAG 2.0 problem. And that is to use a submit button to update the data. It’s hardly rocket science. And, they could possibly drop some of the “browser does not support script” messages which appear all over the site while they’re on.

So there we have it: one simple problem that highlights the fact that Redbridge does not properly get accessibility, and fails both WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 at the most basic priority levels. But of course that’s not all…

There’s data tables not marked up properly:

This is actually quite a common error: people realise that the top row of a data table contains header information, so they mark this up accordingly using <th> cells. But they forget that generally at least one item in each row is the header for that row also.

Take the sixth <td> cell in the table. It contains the value “full-time”, which is associated with the header “hours”. Unfortunately, this is not actually associated with any other value, when in practice it would be more useful if the data value in the first column “accountant” was marked up as a header for that row, because then someone would actually be able to ascertain which jobs were full-time…

This fails WCAG 1.0 at the single-A level — and let’s face it, the checkpoint does specifically mention row headers:

5.1 For data tables, identify row and column headers. [Priority 1] WCAG 1.0: Table Headers

…and similarly it fails WCAG 2.0 at the first priority level…

1.3.1 Info and Relationships: Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text. (Level A) WCAG 2.0: Info and Relationships

Oh, and don’t get me on to poor use of alt text. Decorative images with pointless alt text all over the shop. #FailFailFail.

Redbridge Fails: Mobility Impaired Users

Frequently, people with upper limb disability (or some other problem, such as Parkinsons) will struggle to use a mouse. So they will navigate through a site using the keyboard only. So one of the useful things brought in by WCAG 2.0 (but in place before that at sites where people properly “get” accessibility) is keyboard focus.

2.4.7 Focus Visible: Any keyboard operable user interface has a mode of operation where the keyboard focus indicator is visible. (Level AA)WCAG 2.0 Focus Visible

Basically, if you hover the mouse over a link on Redbridge i, the link will change in some way (the navigation gets a little blue glow behind it; the underline on some links disappear and so on). If you repeat with the TAB key to move to the same place using the keyboard, you will find, at best, a very faint focus indicator put in by your browser because those designing the site have not thought to include equivalent :focus or :active pseudoclasses in the styling.

WCAG 1.0 fails to address keyboard only users as effectively, so there’s no outright failure of WCAG 1.0 here, but in terms of practical accessibility and also WCAG 2.0, this is a problem.

Redbridge Fails: Hearing Disability

Let’s take checkpoint 1.4 from WCAG 1.0:

For any time-based multimedia presentation (e.g., a movie or animation), synchronize equivalent alternatives (e.g., captions or auditory descriptions of the visual track) with the presentation. [Priority 1]WCAG 1.0: Synchronize Equivalents

For a movie, captions must be synchronised with the presentation. Okay? And that’s Priority 1 in WCAG 1.0, and er… let’s see … exactly the same in WCAG 2.0:

1.2.2 Captions (Prerecorded): Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media, except when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labeled as such. (Level A)WCAG 2.0: Captions (Prerecorded)

So if there’s a video with meaningful audio (as opposed to some background music), then it should have captions for either WCAG 1.0 or WCAG 2.0 for even the most basic conformance claim. But if you look at the Redbridge Trading Standards Video, it doesn’t have captions, so that’s a conformance fail for WCAG 1.0 and WCAG 2.0.

When I first started looking at this, I thought this was just a technical fail: that it would fail to meet the conformance criteria, but not actually fail people in terms of practical accessibility, because they have produced a transcript of the video. And, had that actually been the case, I would have given them credit for doing more than most Local Authorities actually do.

Only they’ve demonstrated a critical lack of accessibility awareness by missing out help for anyone with hearing impairments. For anyone with vision impairments, the “transcript” is fine: it contains a text equivalents of the images of text which appear on the screen. For anyone with hearing impairments however, it is useless — it contains the text showing the details they will have already been able to see, but there is no way of accessing the information that they have been unable to hear.

May I therefore suggest that as well as remembering that accessibility isn’t just about the blind, the people behind Redbridge actually look up the definition of the word transcript, because all the ones I could find specifically mention that it is a text equivalent of recorded speech, which seems to be the rather important bit they have missed out of theirs…

Redbridge: Built Into the CMS Fail

You cannot have a Content Management System that produces accessible output automatically. The best that it is possible to manage is a system that is capable of producing accessible output, providing your content editors use it correctly. And in order to achieve that, your content editors must have at least a basic understanding of accessibility (or at least that they have to use the CMS in a particular way).

If they don’t, you get #Fail.

For example, in order to achieve WCAG 1.0 at level AA or above, any direct quotation must be marked up with quotation markup — <blockquote> or <q>. Whether or not I think this is actually necessary is another matter: if you say you conform, you need to do it:

Your content editors must therefore know that any direct quotation must be marked up. And the CMS you are using must have the facility to allow them to do this. Otherwise you can’t reach WCAG 1.0 at the Double-A level. (Redbridge failed this on the You Can Make a Difference news page).

Then you’ve got the PDF minutes of council meetings in breach of WCAG 1.0 checkpoint 11.1, which tells you to use W3C technologies if they are appropriate for a task (and there’s certainly nothing in those plain-text minutes which required them to be PDF rather than HTML).

You also need to ensure that anyone adding a list of items knows not only that they need to be marked up as a list, but how to achieve that, and similarly that headers should be marked up appropriately rather than just being deemed headers by the fact the font is put in bold. I have to say actually that Redbridge i did achieve these last two things pretty well so far as I can tell (given an hour to scan the site) but this does not detract from the point that this is not CMS-out-of-the-box, this is content editors who know what they are doing.

Redbridge Terms and Conditions

On a slight aside, I did attempt to read Redbridge’s Terms and Conditions before using the site, only to discover that they didn’t actually seem to make sense.

By using or accessing any part of the Council’s website you agree to be bound by the following terms and conditions:

• By using Redbridge i you agree to be legally bound by these terms, which shall take effect immediately on your first use of Redbridge i. If you do not agree to be legally bound by all the following terms please do not access and/or use Redbridge i.
• The Council may change these terms at any time by posting changes online. Please review these terms regularly to ensure you are aware of any changes made by the Council. Your continued use of Redbridge i after changes are posted means you agree to be legally bound by these terms as updated and/or amended.
• If any of the following terms and conditions is illegal, invalid or unenforceable this will not affect the validity or enforceability of the remaining terms and conditions
• The relationship between you and the London Borough of Redbridge will be governed by English law. You agree to submit all disputes to the jurisdiction of the English courts.

Redbridge Terms and Conditions

In other words, the terms and conditions are that I must obey the terms and conditions, in so far as they are valid in English law. Seems a bit, well… circular to me….

Redbridge: A Model for the future

I am not trying to imply that Redbridge i is crap: it isn’t. In terms of interactivity it is indeed leading the way in showing councils what they should be doing. I do not wish to imply that Redbridge is not something sites should not strive towards in terms of allowing user customisation — allowing users to have the site displaying the information they want, rather than what the council is telling ‘em they want.

That’s all good stuff.

But it does have accessibility issues, and these need to be mentioned for a few reasons.

• If people are holding this site up as an example of what councils should do, they ought to know where the site doesn’t do so well, so they know how they can improve on it
• So Redbridge i can improve on it themselves and truly make their site a shining example of council sites
• If people are thinking that they have achieved WCAG-AAA compliance, or that level of compliance can be achieved ‘out-of-the-box’ with any software, they need to be educated otherwise.
• Those claiming particularly high levels of accessibility conformance need to be held up to scrutiny: otherwise people will follow them and may unwittingly copy bad practice.

So to all those at Redbridge i who’ve read this, and feel like I’ve given them a kicking, I’m sorry. Yes, I know my site isn’t perfect either (but I don’t claim to be, and I don’t have your resources). But rather than give me a kicking, find out who it was who claimed that your site was Triple-A accessible, and shout at them. They are the ones who put you up there to be challenged and knocked down.

But rather than get grumpy about it, why not look to fix the problems, and truly turn Redbridge i into that shining star?

*Ahem*. Now comes the blatant plug bit. if anyone would like me to advise them on what they can do to improve their site — public sector or otherwise — get in touch, let me know what you’re after and I’ll sort you out with a quote.