Improving Accessibility: Lessons from making design elements screen reader-friendly

Editorial information: Digital Services Factory Blog

This publication is a blog post describing the process of assessing accessibility of an online service provided by the Republic of Cyprus to citizens affected by the bail-in during the financial crisis in 2013 in the Country. The service was developed by the Digital Service Factory of the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, who introduced new components and patterns and tried to make them as usable and accessible as possible, with special focus on screen reader accessibility. 

This article reports on the process of design and evaluation, and the lessons learned, including errors and solutions with particular examples. The aim of the short blog post is to guide the designers of the Digital Service Factory through similar processes and identify specific elements and issues of attention in design accessible web services. The whole effort is under the project gov.cy which is the starting point of the Cyprus government of implementing the Web Accessibility National Legislation, with regards to the transposition of the relevant EU Directive.