Accessibility in Government | XM Community
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Hi Government Community,

 

Did you know that approximately 1.3 billion people worldwide, which is about 16% of the global population, live with a significant disability? (WHO, 2023). According to the Australian Public Service Academy, Accessibility is about ensuring systems are designed so everyone can fully participate in public or professional life (APS Academy, 2021).

 

With this in mind, Accessibility or 'a11y’ is a key area for government departments to heavily think about when designing their experience management programs (whether it is for citizen or employee experiences).

 

There are tools within the Qualtrics platform that can help meet these demands such as third-party screen readers (like JAWS) and leveraging the expert review feature that diagnoses which questions are inaccessible to ensure your surveys are WCAG 2.0 AA (and Section 508) compliant.

 

Below are some examples differentiating accessible vs non-accessible question types.

 

Accessible question types:

  • Descriptive text
  • Multiple choice (all types)
  • Net promoter® score

Non-accessible question types:

  • Rank order (Drag and drop and select box)
  • Constant sum (sliders and bars)
  • Pick, group, and rank
  • Hot spot

 

How are you ensuring your surveys meet accessible compliance for both your community and employees? 

 

Thanks!

 

***Please look out for further posts around this topic coming soon…

Hi Government Community,

 

Did you know that approximately 1.3 billion people worldwide, which is about 16% of the global population, live with a significant disability? (WHO, 2023). According to the Australian Public Service Academy, Accessibility is about ensuring systems are designed so everyone can fully participate in public or professional life (APS Academy, 2021).

 

With this in mind, Accessibility or 'a11y’ is a key area for government departments to heavily think about when designing their experience management programs (whether it is for citizen or employee experiences).

 

There are tools within the Qualtrics platform that can help meet these demands such as third-party screen readers (like JAWS) and leveraging the expert review feature that diagnoses which questions are inaccessible to ensure your surveys are WCAG 2.0 AA (and Section 508) compliant.

 

Below are some examples differentiating accessible vs non-accessible question types.

 

Accessible question types:

  • Descriptive text
  • Multiple choice (all types)
  • Net promoter® score

Non-accessible question types:

  • Rank order (Drag and drop and select box)
  • Constant sum (sliders and bars)
  • Pick, group, and rank
  • Hot spot

 

How are you ensuring your surveys meet accessible compliance for both your community and employees? 

 

Thanks!

 

***Please look out for further posts around this topic coming soon…

Being a US federal agency, we think often about accessibility of all the ways that people access our information, including surveys. A couple additional pointers to keep in mind:

  • Matrix questions are hard for screen readers to read, so they are best avoided.
  • Also, accessibility issues can arise any time you’re presenting information visually so they’re worth bearing in mind when you are presenting findings as well. Best practices include:
    • Watch font sizes and colors -- avoid small fonts, and make sure that colors are high-contrast so as to be easily readable.
    • Avoid intense colors which can be difficult for people to study, especially for neurodivergent people.
    • Also avoid color combinations that are difficult for people with colorblindness to distinguish, like reds and greens.
    • Remember as well that certain color combinations can carry political or other connotations that may not have to do with the data; for example, red and blue carry a political context in the US.

Finally, as federal government agencies in the US face a government shutdown this week, please contact your members of congress to ask them to pass a funding bill so that we can continue serving people with needed services and information.

Hi Adam, thanks for sharing your additional insight here. Definitely valid points to keep in mind when designing surveys. 

I have gotten some wonderful JavaScript code from two posts here that let my users control font sizes as well as change the typeface. ​@Tom_1842 deserves a big round of applause for helping me get these developed and implemented for use at my organization.

I also recently in a survey figured out how to experiment with adding a speaker button that respondents can click to play an audio recording of the question text. This is for a small in-house survey and I would likely want to read the responses and record that next time. But I’m thinking down the line if I can make it smoother it would be great for languages meant to be spoken instead of written (e.g. Hmong). It would also help with literacy limitations. But I worry about file size and storage.

Hi Betsy, thanks for sharing these use cases - very interesting.

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