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05. Make sure everyone can use the service

Provide a service that everyone can use, including disabled people and people with other legally protected characteristics. And people who do not have access to the internet or lack the skills or confidence to use it.

Meet accessibility standards, including both online and offline parts

  • User research at Alpha revealed a range of user needs regarding accessibility:
    • Ensuring that text was only over a single line in tables to meet the requirements of dyslexic users.
    • Ensuring to use appropriate colour choices to meet the needs of individuals with colour blindness.
  • We aim to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA and have conducted both internal and external accessibility audits of the site.
    • The Monitor Space Hazards team conducted an internal accessibility audit against the guidelines, using the Web Accessibility Evaluation (WAVE) tool. This process highlighted a few minor issues, examples including missing table headers. All issues identified were then documented and addressed.
    • An external audit was conducted by the Digital Accessibility Centre (DAC) in May 2022 in which users with varying access needs (including use of assistive technologies) assessed the site. The audit identified A, AA, AAA issues and made usability suggestions to improve the accessibility of the service. The MSH team then catalogued all of the issues and addressed the high-level (A) and medium-level (AA) priorities in order to be compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines. Any issues that could not be addressed (including issues associated with third party services used by Monitor Space Hazards) were then documented in the accessibility statement on the site.
    • We continue to check accessibility frequently by using the WAVE evaluation tool whilst running our manual test script to test our demo, development and real site for all user types.
  • We have an accessibility statement on our website.

Avoid excluding any groups within the audience they’re intended to serve

  • Our users will range from very technical to non-technical users across the world of satellite operations and UK government. We have ensured our service meets all these needs.
    • E.g. users can access the data via an API or via the web interface.
    • E.g. we use scientific notation and decimal places as appropriate for different users.
    • Several interface improvements covered above.
  • We are testing the service with university students at Cranfield University to ensure that users with less experience and specialist knowledge in SST are able to use the service.

Carry out research with participants who represent the potential audience for the service, including people with access needs

  • We interviewed users from 75% of satellite operators which we believe gave us a highly representative sample of future users, however, we will want to go further and complete an accessibility audit, to be confident our service is usable by everyone.
  • When developing conjunction and re-entry services for government users, we interviewed 25 users from across 12 different government bodies, striving to include both those with more experience responding to space hazard alerts and those who are newer to the area of work.
  • The DAC user testing team, who conducted the external accessibility audit, comprised of people with a range of disabilities and access needs, including blindness, low vision, dyslexia, learning disabilities, mobility impairments, deafness, and anxiety/ panic disorders.

Make sure that people are not excluded from being able to use the service because they lack digital skills or internet access, providing appropriate assisted digital support to cover any gaps

  • This is a particularly tricky sub-point. MSH is a product for a highly technical environment (orbital analytics) where all other aspects of people’s work rely on large data flows across the internet into digital systems which they use every day. Further, it will be impossible to access MSH without having already accessed other digital services so as to (for example) register your spacecraft. It is therefore reasonable to state that a certain level of digital skills and internet access will be present within all of our potential audience.
  • We have therefore concentrated on ensuring that MSH is accessible to the widest possible level of digital skills. To achieve this we have:
    • Used the heavily-tested GOV.UK design patterns throughout.
    • Ensured text follows GDS style and content design patterns.
    • Undertaken wide user research and hundreds of iterations as above.
  • In general making what is a very data-heavy product as clear as possible has been very highly loved by all users.
  • The site is built with a non-JS core which is progressively enhanced.
  • We have included a demo video with accurate closed captions on the website, helping people to navigate and understand the features of MSH easily.
This page was last reviewed on 7 December 2022. It needs to be reviewed again on 7 June 2023 .
This page was set to be reviewed before 7 June 2023. This might mean the content is out of date.