Accessible websites, tested properly

Oxford has a large share of organisations whose visitors depend on accessible websites: the hospitals at Headington, GP practices, dentists and physiotherapists, charities, the university and its colleges, museums, schools and the councils. But it is not only a public sector matter. Older visitors, people with low vision, anyone using a phone one-handed on a bus down the Banbury Road, and people reading in a second language all benefit from a site that is built to be accessible. Accessible web design in Oxford is, in practice, simply good web design for a very mixed audience.

Who this service is for

• Clinics and practices whose patients may be unwell, anxious, older or caring for someone else.
• Charities and community groups with a duty to reach everyone, often on small budgets.
• Public bodies, schools and academies covered by the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
• College departments, museums and research groups that publish a lot of content to the public.
• Any Oxford business that wants its booking, enquiry or checkout forms to work for every customer.

What accessible design means in practice

• Readable text. Generous font sizes, good line spacing and colour contrast that meets or exceeds the AA ratio of 4.5 to 1 for body text.
• Clear structure. One main heading per page, headings in order, landmarks so screen reader users can jump around.
• Keyboard support. Every menu, form and button usable without a mouse, with a visible focus outline.
• Forms that help. Labels that stay visible, error messages that explain what went wrong, no time limits.
• Meaningful images and links. Alt text that describes what matters, and link text that makes sense on its own.
• Respect for preferences. Animations reduced for people who ask for that, and pages that still work when zoomed to 400 per cent.

What is included, step by step

1. Scoping. We agree which templates, journeys and third-party tools (booking, payments, maps, video) are in scope, and the standard: normally WCAG 2.2 AA.
2. Baseline audit of an existing site, or accessibility notes on the design brief for a new one.
3. Accessible design. Colour, type and layout decisions checked before any code is written, so problems are not designed in.
4. Build. Semantic HTML, proper form markup and keyboard behaviour written in from the start.
5. Manual testing of every template and key journey with keyboards, screen readers, zoom and small screens.
6. Fixes and retest, with a log of what was found and changed.
7. Accessibility statement written from the results, including known issues and how to report a problem.
8. Editor training, so your team keeps headings, alt text and link text right after launch.

The standard, briefly

Level	What it covers	Who should aim for it
WCAG 2.2 A	The minimum: alt text, keyboard access, no seizure-inducing flashes	Nobody should stop here
WCAG 2.2 AA	Contrast, resizing, consistent navigation, clear errors, focus visibility, target sizes	Public bodies, healthcare, education, and our default for every build
WCAG 2.2 AAA	Stricter contrast, sign language for video, simpler reading level	Selected content where the audience needs it

GOV.UK guidance for public sector bodies refers to WCAG 2.2 AA as the standard to meet. Private organisations are not covered by those regulations, but the Equality Act 2010 still asks service providers to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people.

How long it takes

• Audit of an existing site: usually one to three weeks, depending on the number of templates and journeys.
• Fixing an existing site: anything from a few days for contrast and labels to several weeks where templates need rebuilding.
• New accessible build: the same timeline as any bespoke web design project, typically six to twelve weeks. Accessibility adds testing time, not a separate project.

What drives the cost

We do not publish a fixed price because the work varies so much. These are the things that move it:

• Number of distinct templates rather than number of pages. Fifty news articles on one template are tested once.
• Third-party tools. Each embedded booking system, payment provider or form plugin adds testing and sometimes workarounds.
• Documents. PDFs are often the largest hidden job. Converting key documents to accessible web pages is usually cheaper than remediating every PDF.
• Video and audio, which need captions and sometimes transcripts.
• The state of the existing code. A sound site needs adjustments; a heavily layered page-builder site may be cheaper to rebuild.

Common mistakes

• Installing an overlay widget and assuming the job is done.
• Relying on automated checkers alone. They find a portion of issues; the rest need a person.
• Pale text on cream or white backgrounds, especially in footers and form hints.
• Placeholder text instead of labels, which vanishes as soon as someone starts typing.
• Price lists, timetables and menus uploaded as images.
• Treating accessibility as a launch task. Every new page, image and PDF can introduce new problems.

How we measure it

We report against the WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria for every template in scope, listing each issue, its severity and its status. After launch we re-run automated checks monthly as part of website care, and spot-check new content by hand. Where a project serves people with particular needs, such as a patient information site, we recommend testing with real users and can help arrange it.

Documents and PDFs

Oxford organisations publish a great many documents: patient leaflets, annual reports, committee papers, course handbooks. Most PDFs are hard to use with a screen reader and on a phone. Where a document matters to the public, we usually recommend turning it into a web page, which is easier to read, search and keep up to date. Where a PDF must stay, we can tag it properly or advise on how to produce accessible documents in future.

Plain language is part of it

Accessibility includes words. Clinical, legal and academic sites can be hard going for the general public. We write and edit page copy to be plain and direct through our website copywriting service, keeping the precision specialist readers expect while making the page usable for everyone else.