Closure Report
Project Summary
DLAM have developed and support a number of bespoke applications for CMVM , in use for teaching & learning. Accessibility regulations now mandate that public sector websites and applications should contain an accessibility statement which provide details about how accessible the application is, describes known issues with the accessibility of the site and provides estimates for when accessibility issues in the site may be fixed.
This project aimed to:
- Provide an audit of all sites which DLAM support for CMVM in the teaching and learning area.
- Prioritise the list based on when they were developed and how heavily they are being used.
- Test the accessibility for those applications against the WCAG 2.1AA criteria.
- Use the results to prepare accessibility statements for each application
- Estimate the timescale for fixing accessibility issues.
Scope
- Audit of all historic and current CMVM learning applications.
- Prioritisation of accessibility statement authoring - prioritising new applications and those which are heavily in use.
Out of scope
- Fixing accessibility issues. The fixes shall be planned in as part of a follow-on project.
- Applications which are scheduled to be decommissioned in the short-medium term future.
The project remained in scope.
Objectives and Deliverables
| No | Description | Priority | Objective/Deliverable Met? (Yes/No) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O1 | Creation of accessibility statements for CMVM bespoke applications relating to teaching & Learning | MUST | ||
| O1D1 | Audit of all CMVM learning & teaching applications | MUST | Yes | Complete: see CMVM LT Site Audit |
| O1D2 | Prioritise list for accessibility statement writing, if not prioritised, keep an audit trail of reasons. | MUST | Yes | Complete |
| O1D3 | Accessibility testing each application on the list | MUST | Yes | There is one site we believe should be decommissioned but the site owner is on long term leave and so we can't speak to them. |
| O1D2 | Write accessibility statement for all sites | MUST | Yes | There is one site we believe should be decommissioned but the site owner is on long term leave and so we can't speak to them. |
| O1D3 | Estimate of time to fix accessibility issues for each site to allow CMVM to make decision about what is fixed and when. | MUST | No | It was decided that this would take a significant amount of time to do so the team are adding the tasks for each site to their business-as-usual work for the services going forward. The Service Owner will be given regular updates on the status of the accessibility fixes going forward and the accessibility statements will be updated to reflect changes/improvements. |
Analysis of Resource Usage:
Staff Usage Estimate: 40 days
Staff Usage Actual: 40 days
Other Resource Estimate: £0
Other Resource Actual: £0
Other Resource Variance: 0%
Outcome
Agreed that estimates to fix accessibility issues would take a significant amount of time to complete and instead issues would be fixed as work is done to systems going forward (bug fixes, new features). These will be tracked in the development team's issue tracking system.
An additional benefit of this project was a website audit allowing the team to prioritise the shutdown of websites which were no longer in use, with accompanying infrastructure cost savings.
Key Learning Points
Having a proper Project Manager to manage this project would have helped close it more quickly.
Outstanding Issues
- There are known accessibility issues outlined in the relevant Accessibility statements which are listed in the issue tracking system. These are planned to be systematically addressed when each of the systems is being worked on in the future.
- One site was identified to be decommissioned, but the site owner was on long term leave and was unable to confirm during the project. They have just returned from long term leave and ageed the site can be decommissioned, so this has agreed to be done as part of business as usual activities.