Meeting the NSW accessibility standard: Aboriginal Housing Office
In 2012 NSW told every government website to meet WCAG 2.0 AA. We upgraded the AHO site, rebuilt its templates to the standard, then checked the live site and showed their authors how to keep it that way.
The deadline
In March 2012 the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet told all government websites to meet a set of standards, including WCAG 2.0 level AA. The AHO site had been running on an old version of Plone, with about 220 pages built before those guidelines existed.
What we did
We upgraded the platform and rebuilt the templates to the standard: proper mark-up, layout controlled by stylesheets, pages that stayed readable at any window size, and two levels of navigation: a horizontal menu for sections and an expanding tree for the pages below.
Font size controls and printer-friendly pages went on every page. Forms, tables, lists and headings each got a set treatment instead of whatever the last author had used. We tested the site in every browser they supported and validated it against W3C standards.
Sign-off was the directive's own compliance checklist, completed with no exceptions.
Keeping it accessible
Passing on handover day is easier than staying accessible afterwards. After launch we checked the live site against WCAG 2.0 AA and wrote up what we found: each issue, the part of the page it was in, and what we did about it.
The report also splits the responsibility. Problems in the theme are ours to fix. Problems in the content are the AHO’s, so their team has an accessibility checking account and can test pages as they write them. A good template does not help much if the content put into it is not accessible.
We support the site under a service level agreement as an approved NSW supplier.
What this involved
A NSW government website brought up to WCAG 2.0 level AA after the 2012 directive
A Plone upgrade and a template rebuild across about 220 pages, on the servers already in place
Proper mark-up, stylesheet-driven layout and two levels of navigation, to the NSW style directive
Font size controls, printer-friendly pages, and set treatments for forms, tables, lists and headings
Sign-off against the directive's compliance checklist, with no exceptions
A check of the live site after launch, listing each issue and the fix
An accessibility checking account for their authors, so they can test their own content
Support under a service level agreement as an approved NSW supplier