20 May 2022
Today we're celebrating the 11th Global Accessibility Awareness Day. It's a day to talk, think and learn about digital access and inclusion, so it seems like a good opportunity to share where we are with our new website.
Last year we shared some of the work we'd been doing to meet the accessibility requirements for public sector organisations. This year, we're in the middle of upgrading our current website. Accessibility and inclusion is at the centre of the work we're doing.
Our new site is based on the Government Design System and will be familiar to anyone who uses GOV.UK or NHS.UK. Because these sites are based on extensive user research and testing, accessibility is built in from the start.
We moved our Council Tax pages to the new site in March. These pages had been through a mini redesign fairly recently and are one of the most visited of the website. Each page was checked for accessibility issues before going live and we're keeping an eye on data and feedback to see where any improvements might be needed.
We're now in the middle of migrating the rest of the content. All the website content has been moved to a test site and we're going through pages, seeing how they have migrated and fixing anything that we can in advance of moving everything into live. This is likely to be later this summer.
Once the new site is live we will start work on our content and site structure; making sure it meets accessibility standards, but also making sure content is clear, easy to read and helps our website users find the information they need or complete the task they set out to do, regardless of what device they are using.
We'll be talking to users and organisations in the city to make sure we get this right. If you want to help us test new pages, just leave your email address on the feedback link on the Council Tax pages on the new site and we will be in touch when we need people.