Aims & Objectives
The project aimed to research barriers to employment faced by disabled people in England’s North West. It focused on the accessibility of employment information and application processes, online, to disabled people. This has lead to policy recommendations and guidelines designed to improve employers’ websites and disabled people’s access to work, included in this report. This in turn should lead to greater numbers of disabled people working in the region.
Objectives:
In consultation with users of adapted computer equipment, the project’s objectives included:
- To discover what employment related websites are used and identify any problematic issues related to accessing the sites.
- To audit a representative sample of employment related websites for compliance to accessibility standards.
- To engage with regional public and private sector organisations to determine how they define ‘web access’ and what steps can be taken to improve web accessibility.
These three objectives were met.
- Over 30 disabled individuals took part in user testing, focus group discussions, and interviews, from which personal experience of disabled people's use of jobs websites was ascertained and recorded.
- Over a hundred local, regional and national online employment resources were subjected to a rigorous IT audit against the globally agreed standards of web accessibility.
- Five regional web-design companies and six regional public sector organisations provided interviews. Additionally, one of the five web companies was commissioned to produce an accessible website for the project, which could:
- be updated and maintained by our blind research assistant using his assistive technologies.
- would include a 'model' online job application which could be accessed using screen reading software.
This part of the project provided a great deal of insight, and an entire chapter of the final report, revealing gaps between what the globally agreed standards, adhered to by the best web design companies, and the reality of accessing websites using assistive technologies. These gaps were overcome by working closely with the company, and involving external disabled user testers as well as the experience of our in-house blind research assistant, resulting in further recommendations for policy that are included in this Final Report.
