In late 2023, the Department for Education (DfE) DesignOps team noticed a recurring problem across the services DfE provided to users. Many of our digital services did not have accessibility statements, or had out-of-date, or incorrect statements. This issue made it difficult for users to understand how accessible our services were, and we lacked the data needed to identify common accessibility issues or track progress.
Identifying the challenge
We recognised the challenge – teams struggled to provide or keep accessibility statements accurate and compliant with the Public Sector Accessibility Regulations 2018. Without a central way to manage these statements, it was impossible to consistently identify accessibility risks or track fixes effectively.
Setting our objectives
We set ourselves the task of creating a service that could manage accessibility statements and issues centrally. In January 2024, we recruited a senior accessibility specialist who guided us in aligning our approach with best practices and legal standards. They were instrumental in developing learning and training tools in the department, working with digital teams in understanding accessibility requirements, and supporting them with audits, troubleshooting, advice, and recommendations.
Throughout 2024, we also involved a group of T-Level students from Bury College who were with us as part of a work placement. They joined us one day each week, mapping user journeys, researching user needs, and identifying the crucial data points needed to capture accessibility issues to support the wider goal of automating accessibility statement generation.
Taking practical steps
By early 2025, with the students completing their placement, the DesignOps team took their valuable work forward.
In April 2025, we launched a private beta involving several key DfE services to understand if it improved the management of issues and accessibility statements for teams. This beta allows teams to:
- create, update, and close accessibility issues efficiently
- assign issues to relevant team members
- generate real-time reports aligned with WCAG criteria
- provide dynamically generated accessibility statements via unique URLs
We also built our product to support multi-tenant use, meaning arms-length bodies and partner agencies can use it with their own branding on their statements.
Positive early outcomes
The initial feedback from our private beta is very positive. Teams now have clearer visibility of accessibility issues, enabling them to act quickly and keep statements accurate and compliant. Users benefit from up-to-date accessibility statements, better support, and clearer information.
We’ve also identified several future features:
- recording detailed accessibility audit findings directly in our system
- allowing auditors to upload audit results via CSV files, reducing manual data entry
- monitoring GitHub, SVN, and Azure DevOps repositories for accessibility issues
Additional ideas include integrating automated accessibility checks into continuous integration processes and enabling automatic onboarding from service registers for departments
Cross-government show and tell
We held a cross-government show and tell on 13 May, where we demoed the product. Questions and feedback were forthcoming and it’s clear there is a need for a product like this in other departments. As we work in the open, the code for the product is freely available to use and with a little configuration, could be used by anyone to track issues and provide real-time accessibility statements.
Our next steps
Over the coming months, we’ll:
- onboard additional DfE services and partner agencies into the private beta
- enhance our reporting based on user feedback
- collaborate with GDS to consider broader government adoption
- develop a public beta plan for how we could support other government departments to use the service
By bringing together issue management, dynamic accessibility statements, and targeted guidance, we aim to significantly improve digital accessibility across government services.
1 comment
Comment by stephanie hill posted on
This is so important, as why have an accessibility statement people cannot understand. It also helps the digital team to help prioritise what to fix. Keep up the good work team!