Manual auditing provides extra depth to Kirklees Council’s accessibility testing

Chapter 1: Introduction.

So my name is Graeme Murrell. I work in the IT team at Kirklees Council. I’m an IT Principal Officer with responsibility for user experience and accessibility and digital services. I have a team of seven people. They are very definitely accessibility enthusiasts. We manage the Kirklees website, the intranet, and a platform called My Kirklees. But we also have oversight of the overall quality and compliance of the council’s digital estate.

And the current digital estate is one of 52 websites. One of the ways that we’ve been able to use Silktide, for instance, is we now have an overview of the quality metrics of all of those 52 websites.

Chapter 2: Choosing which pages to audit.

So, which 15 pages on a 1000-page website? And in fact, that kind of dictates why we felt that the manual accessibility audit would really add value. Because we’ve got certain page types repeated again and again and again throughout the website.

So we probably just need one of those page types and issues captured on that one page type will almost certainly be replicated across other pages that use the same template. Even though only one page has been audited, we can then roll out those improvements based on the audit across a hell of a lot of pages on the site.

The other types of page that I thought would be useful would be some of our pages which lead to transactions. And then another type of page was where we’ve got more creative pages. So we have, in common with most council websites, most pages use the same basic template and same basic design, but not all pages do.

Are we getting it right when we’re being really creative, when we’re stretching out? That was really key to what I was hoping to get from the manual accessibility audit. Once we got those pages together, they were delivered to Andy, and I think we had a meeting at that point Andy as well, just for me to say a little bit about why certain page types had been chosen. What the significance of them was.

Chapter 3: Tailoring the audit.

Another thing which we asked Andy to do was to look at color contrast from a triple-A point of view. That was important to find out where we fail in doing that. And I knew that some of the instances that I was aware of weren’t being picked up by the automated audits.

So it was important to get, basically confirmation and, Andy you were great at picking that out. There was one particular instance of far-too-poor color contrast. Links on a menu, on menu pages, which I was really, really hoping would come back in the audit. And it did!

If I move on to delivery of the report, Andy delivered the report right close to Christmas. So we weren’t going to do any acting on it right then. But I think that’s when we when we met Andy to just briefly go through your findings on the report and the next steps towards the workshop.

Chapter 4: The report and workshop.

Once I had the report, I spent a bit of time looking through it and pulled out some of what I considered were the highlights. Okay, which of these issues are site wide? They’re big ticket issues, and they’re easy to fix issues because we fix them once, probably in the header. Couple of things in the header. Possibly in the footer.

There was one thing in the footer. Fix them once and they’re fixed on every page on the site. Then looking at which ones are common across pages. That’s kind of my next tier, because again, that fixes things in multiple locations. Then which ones are specific to pages. Looking from that point of view, I then kind of had a think about, okay, which team member is best to attend to these issues?

Issues to do with CSS, maybe pass to one team member. Issues to do with JavaScript, maybe pass to another. It was really interesting then to have the workshop, and again, I feel like I keep saying this, but the team were really quite fired up about the whole thing of coming to the workshop. And I think we had a really good engaging session in the workshop and Andy’s presentation of the problems was quite different to mine.

That’s… I really liked that, actually, because it means that we’ve got a fusion of ways of seeing those issues, and matching those two has been really useful. From a combination of kind of my breakdown of what we’ve got from the report itself and from Andy’s workshop session, I’m then busy creating work packages for the team to work on. Automated audits will tell you on an issue by issue basis, but they won’t give you a nudge towards thinking,

Actually, the page is deficient in what it does. The manual accessibility audit kind of just said that bit more about that page. A little bit more of a head turner sometimes where the manual accessibility audit is, in a sense, nailing things, a bit more

Chapter 5: Unexpected findings.

Our cookies functionality. We have a page where we tell people about our cookies, and we give people the ability to change their cookie settings… except for those people who use tabbing through the page. Because everything on the page tabs correctly, except for the button where you can change your cookie settings.

It doesn’t see that button. So that’s a massive oversight, and that’s one which we wouldn’t have found, in any way shape or form, without the manual accessibility audit.

Chapter 6: Advice to other organizations.

I would tell them that you can get under the bonnet of a site with Silktide automated testing, but, it’s almost like the difference between getting under the bonnet of an old car where you could do everything yourself and, in a modern car where, you know, you need a lot of assistance.

One of the nice things that we found from Andy’s testing was that we’re actually not doing too bad at all. But what Andy’s testing gave us was that bit of assistance to get under the bonnet of a modern car, and find out things about the beast that we really weren’t aware of.

I would say, get your site to a point where you’re happy with it and then look at manual accessibility auditing. But, to use that term that I used earlier of getting a bit of a kicking, do it because, that’s what you want. You want to turn stones that haven’t been turned, and that will happen.

Expect work to come out of the back of it. Expect to find out things that you weren’t aware of. Expect to have some things that you suspected weren’t quite right, but weren’t being revealed by the automated testing to be confirmed. But also, expect something really comprehensive. Andy’s findings were really, really comprehensive. The methodology that he uses to do the manual accessibility audit is rigorous.

When we came to the workshop, there was plenty to discuss. Everybody was really engaged and asking questions and finding out things about the site which we haven’t been aware of before. So, if you want a much greater understanding of what the beast is that you are offering to the public, then a manual accessibility audit just gives you the ability to make that next step, and to improve things which previously you didn’t even know required improving.

On our automated testing, we’ve got really high scores, but really high scores still doesn’t mean that you’ve got there, that you’ve achieved it. It’s a constantly evolving story. And you should be prepared to accept some findings and conclusions that may appear unpalatable. But, in a very big respect, that’s what we’re here for.

We’re here to, you know, roll our sleeves up and respond to those difficult things to do, and get them done.

Chapter 7: Understanding the report.

I think not making it overly technical is… that to me is a real positive, because it means that everybody can understand it without having to wrestle with it. And that’s the same with, with the Silktide product. You know, the product uses plain English throughout. Where some others that I’ve seen just kind of quote WCAG at you all the time.

WCAG isn’t always the easiest source to understand. So keeping it simple works really, really well for me.

Chapter 8: The overall value.

I think it’s very good value for money indeed actually because, I mentioned before about how rigorous you were. That’s really, really welcome. I was really pleased to see, and you mentioned that, you know, overall, we’re well on the right track. And we’ve got a really good website.

But, to find out the extra things that we need to do, and to find them out in such a detailed way, plus the workshop, you know. The kind of level of hand-holding and description that that went on through the workshop, and really good knowledge that you imparted to members of the team. That’s really, really valuable stuff that we can learn from.

Overall, I’m really happy with the experience that I’ve had as a customer.

Chapter 8: Outro.

[Silktide voice over]
Talk to us about our accessibility services today. With special thanks to Graeme Murrell from Kirklees Council.