Improving website accessibility for Kinetic Buses
Improving website accessibility for Kinetic Buses
Kinetic is an Australian-based multinational bus company that owns several bus operations in Australia and New Zealand, including the SkyBus business.
Dominique from the Inclusive Design team is an accessible transport specialist, serving on all the public transport Accessibility Reference Groups (ARG) in Melbourne. He recently joined the ARG for Kinetic and identified an opportunity for Kinetic to improve the online customer experience for commuters with access needs.
Justin Rogers, General Manager, Customer Experience jumped at the opportunity for Dominique to introduce him to the Ability Works Inclusive Design team.
“The audit gave us a clear list of continued practical improvements to help us ensure our website remains accessible and a positive online experience with our service. It’s a great step forward in our ongoing efforts to make sure our digital experience works for everyone.
Dom, who’s part of our Accessibility Reference Group, was involved through Ability Works—and this really shows the value of having the ARG. It helps us connect directly with people who use our services and make real improvements based on their experiences.”
Justin Rogers – General Manager, Customer Experience
Aims
As a leading public transport operator, Kinetic wanted to understand existing website accessibility issues that might prevent assistive technology users and people with access needs from accessing the information they need from the Kinetic website.
Methodology
Our Project Team, led by Bri, tested the accessibility of the website. Shen, our Technical Projects Officer and junior tester, conducted web accessibility testing against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), an international standard for assessing the accessibility of web content, design, and development for people with disabilities and users of assistive technology. This involved:
- An automated test to check for website accessibility issues.
- A manual test for accessibility issues that cannot be detected using automated tools. These can include keyboard navigation, touch screen navigation, visual presentation, alternative text, audio and video, semantics and document structure, forms, dynamic content, and custom widgets.
- A comprehensive Audit Report to bring all the findings together into a usable format that allows stakeholders to remediate the issues found based on recommendations provided.
Inclusive Projects Coordinator, Dominique, also organised usability testing with Ability Works employees with access needs to test three key areas of the site. Together this established a process to develop user stories and determine how easy or hard it is to navigate and understand how well people can move through the pages and find what they need.
Outcome
When the Audit and Usability Testing Report was complete, we shared the findings and insights in a meeting with the Kinetic team where we stepped through all aspects of the Report.
“… It was great working on this project. It brought together my work at Ability Works in Inclusive Design with my expertise and work on the Kinetic Accessibility Reference Group. I gained further skills and knowledge around digital accessibility as a result of working on this project…”
Dominique – Project Coordinator, Inclusive Design, Ability Works