European Social Fund Council in Sweden
Project information
- Services: Accessibility audit and usability testing
- Client: European Social Fund Council in Sweden
- Project dates: 2020
Project in brief
Evaluation of a new website designed with accessibility requirements in mind.
Our mission
Every year, the European Union invests €10 billion in the Social Fund. This money is used to fund various national, regional and local projects that contribute to employment and skills development. The Swedish ESF Council is the authority that manages the European Social Fund in Sweden (its registered name is the Council of the European Social Fund in Sweden).
When developing its new website, the ESF Council wanted to investigate how easy the interface was to use and, as they are subject to the Act on the Accessibility of Digital Public Services, whether they meet the accessibility requirements for government websites.
Our work
We divided our assignment into two sub-projects:
One project consisted of traditional user-based usability testing of the website, which at the time was available in a beta version. This was to identify potential usability issues that could be addressed before launching the website.
Together with the ESF Council, three target groups were identified to participate in the project. We included internal users who were employees of the ESF Council with experience in, for example, the management of calls for proposals, quality follow-up and audits. External users were also included - e.g. project owners and managers with experience (or could conceivably have experience) from projects funded by the ESF Council. Furthermore there was a group of other relevant users who could benefit from the ESF Council website - participants in this group had some form of disability, such as visual impairment.
The second sub-project was an accessibility audit of the website. The audit was focusing on checkpoints and compliance with WCAG 2.1 standards. A comprehensive report was generated, outlining a checklist of assessments of legal requirements, including prioritized items with detailed recommendations and proposed solutions.
"We were very pleased with how Usability Partners carried out the assignment and we are happy to be a reference."
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