Bank Holiday weekends might be great fun, however coming back to squeeze 5 day’s worth of work into just 4 working days can be quite the challenge!

photo of seagulls flying over the water

Summer bank holiday

Our team made the most of our long weekends with trips to London for new tattoos, beautiful dog walks and Shaun even visited Anglesey to make a half-hearted attempt to climb Carnedd Llewelyn in gale force winds!

Marine licensing transformation

Toyah has been working with Sean from Marine Regs on how best to explain to non-experts what ‘sensitive sites’ are, and more importantly: how to determine if their band 1 marine project is going to take place within one. If it is, then they need to complete and submit extra paperwork alongside their licence application form, so it’s a key piece of information that they must be aware of from the outset.

Things are further complicated by the fact that a ‘sensitive site’ is not just based on geographical location - it’s also related to the time of year - so a basic map layer only tells part of the story. As always, our goal is to make the process as easy as possible for the applicant, as this minimises errors in applications and therefore time lost by NRW teams sorting those out. They shouldn’t have to do a ton of homework just to fathom out what we’re asking them, let alone what the answer might be! Toyah and Sean feel like they’ve almost nailed this one, please cross your fingers…

Embedding accessibility in analytical content

The organisation produces a great deal of research-based content periodically throughout the year, and a constant challenge for us has been finding ways to embed accessibility in the heart of our evidence reports.

While analytical in their nature, with elements like tables and photographs, it’s important to ensure that all readers are considered in the write up of the content and reports. Navigating websites especially inaccessible content online creates difficulty for people with disability.

To better understand these challenges, we recommend watching as Adi, a digital accessibility consultant, attempts to book a flight online, but struggles to complete a booking, as unfortunately many websites do not accommodate people with disabilities. This is considered discrimination against people with disabilities here in the UK as we have a legal obligation since 23 September 2018, that all public sector websites and apps need to meet accessibility standards and publish an accessibility statement to ensure online content is accessible.

We have made many changes to our website to ensure it works better for a greater number of people, but we know that the way evidence reports are produced still has a great deal of room for improvement.

Tables – the good, bad and the ugly!

We see lots of problems with tables in evidence reports that are sent to us to be published on the website, and sadly time and time again, we have to say ‘no’ and provide lots of advice to help people correct their mistakes. This is a shame as it takes a lot more time to correct an inaccessible table than it does to create it accessibly in the first place.

When making tables in Word you should use the insert table tool. To ensure you meet the accessibility success criteria relating to tables, make sure:

  • the table has a defined header row (highlight the header row – click the blue ‘Design’ tab and then click the ‘Header row’ checkbox)
  • the checkbox that says ‘Repeat as header row’ is checked in table properties if your table runs across multiple pages – this means the header row is repeated at the start of the table on each page the table runs onto, so users do not have to keep referring back up to the top of the table
  • the checkbox that says ‘Allow row to break across pages’ is not checked – this keeps the table rows all on one page
  • to check the reading order of the table is sensible by tabbing through the table content
  • the table does not contain any merged cells or rows, and if this is required, this is a sign your table is attempting to do too much and needs to be simplified into separate tables.

One key mistake we see regularly with reports shared with our team, is the reliance on visual aids like charts to communicate content, without consulting the necessary guidance for creating accessible documents. When building a chart, we recommend ensuring it’s as simple and clear as possible, without unnecessary formatting.

Making the data clear to readers

One common error is overcomplicating tables and charts, which makes them difficult to understand for all users, not just people accessing the content through a screen reader.

two bar charts, one complicated with an incorrect format and the other simpler and easier to comprehend

As you can see the example above, the chart on the right is much clearer because the text is displayed horizontally, as opposed to vertically or diagonally. This advice also applies to category names on bar charts and y-axis labels in line charts. If it is difficult to fit the labels into the space, it might be worth transposing the chart or changing the units.

For in depth advice, please see this helpful ‘Data visualisation: charts’ guidance produced by Government Analysis Function.

The importance of alt-text Alternative text is often seen as a bit of text that sits behind an image, but it is key to describing non-text content. It is essential so that people with visual or certain cognitive impairments can understand the content communicated by image content.

To meet accessibility success criterion 1.1.1 all non-text content should have alternative text that “serves the equivalent purpose”.

Your alt-text description must describe what you want users to understand from the chart. It should not repeat the chart title, be a literal description or outline every data point shown. Imagine you are describing what the chart is showing to someone who cannot see it, and you’re on the right track.

Useful resources

We recommend the following useful resources to help you build accessible content that passes our checks first time round.

Installations Environmental Permits

We’ve been working on the installations permitting section of the website for some time now. A new electronic application form was launched a month ago, with associated guidance. Last week we published a charging page which will hopefully help users work out how much they need to pay. This week we’re working on the application forms and web content for changing, transferring and surrendering an installations permit.

Water discharge permit exemptions

The way NRW screens applications for exemptions from water discharge permits for private sewage systems is changing so we’re reviewing the web content in this area.

Other things we’ve been working on…

  • James has been working on the first steps to organise user research sessions with our flood duty officers. These sessions will explore the officers’ experience of using our new flood warning system. James has also been pulling together the findings from a workshop with the species licensing team. This is part of an ongoing user research project to improve our permitting service.
  • Our publishing officers, Kim and Sophie have been working their way through a number of high profile reports and adding them as HTML webpages, ensuring they’re accessible to users and optimised for the web.