Improve the accessibility of the GOV.UK Design System website following DAC audit

[owenatgov]

Brief

Publish improvements to the design system website following work to address the DAC audit of the website. We've addressed the major issues and to tackle most of the remaining tripple A and usability issues, we will be:

• carrying out the accessible content audit planned as part of https://github.com/alphagov/design-system-team-internal/issues/919, with the intent to resolve as many of the content issues listed below as possible
• iterating the site search, with the intent to provide a more cohesive solution to Autocomplete: Visual information for sections not available to assistive tech #4006

Epic lead

@owenatgov

Driving role(s)

@selfthinker @calvin-lau-sig7 @hazalarpalikli @querkmachine @Izabela-16

Further detail

This brief follows 2 previous cycles of work following the DAC audit of the website:

• Address issues raised in WCAG 2.2 accessibility audits #3967 where we addressed single A issues and some of the tripple A and usability issues raised by DAC
• https://github.com/alphagov/design-system-team-internal/issues/912 where we started planning an accessible content audit to address DAC guidance issues and investigated 3 open issues from the DAC audit of govuk-frontend in 2023

As a result, there are a number of things we want to also finish off from those cycles:

• Wash up the 3 investigations started in the previous cycle
• Progress engagement with vendors
• Try to finish any issues raised that we think are worth doing but haven't gotten around to yet

We will additionally be using this cycle to run through all remaining issues from this most recent DAC audit and make deicisions about if we want to keep them open with the intent to tackle them now or later, or close them with the intent to not do. The only remaining issues are usability and tripple A so if we have good reason to not do them, we can make that call.

Tasks

Beta Give feedback

1. https://github.com/alphagov/design-system-team-internal/issues/919
2. Re-design visuals of search results #4195
   +0
   
3. Carry out an acessible content audit of the website #4193
   audit july 2024 guidance +2
4. Talk to DAC about possible solutions for vendor issues #4194
   accessibility audit july 2024 +2
   
5. Investigate solution for operating the file upload component with Dragon govuk-frontend#5309
   accessibility audit july 2024 file upload 🔍 investigation +4
   
6. Autocomplete: Lack of visual cue for results #4015
   accessibility audit july 2024 +2
   

   
7. Content after the Start button referenced on website #4026
   accessibility audit july 2024 +2
   
8. Code blocks: Colour contrast issues #4012
   accessibility audit july 2024 +2
   
9. Engage with Microsoft and Apple on issues with assistive tech #4125
   accessibility audit july 2024 +2