Royal Society of Chemistry Case Study

Meet the client: Royal Society of Chemistry

Our client is a UK-based publisher managing peer-reviewed journals, books, and a collection of online databases and literature updating services in the chemical sciences. As part of a commitment to diversity and inclusion, the RSC recently set out to identify, audit, test, and improve their internal processes + apps to meet new guidelines.

First, Testlio and RSC outlined internal goals for accessibility – during our audits and beyond. Their goal is to be a digital-first publisher focusing on delivering high-quality, impactful, accessible content and an excellent customer experience.

Then, we scoped the project. Testlio planned to perform audits and ensure the accessibility of RSC’s internal Licence & Open Access Payment (L&OAP) system. An in-house team, supported by an external dev team, built the L&OAP system to enable authors to sign a licence for their article, choose the open-access licence, and pay the article processing charge. The system is externally facing and handles at least 800 users a week.

Let WCAG lead the way

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) promote accessibility for web content. WCAG is maintained by the W3 Consortium, ISO, and IEC.

WCAG provides relevant criteria a website must meet to be considered ideal for accessibility. Similar considerations are held for image, audio, and video content and the language used on a web page. You’ll have unique alt text attributes for images, text alternatives for more complex data points, and potentially audio equivalents to lengthier text passages. Language should be plain and concise, without flowery speech. It should be easy to navigate for the user and any accessibility software they employ.

The Accessibility team at Testlio performed a WCAG 2.1 audit on the L&OAP system and followed up with guided consultancy. The testers were hyper-focused on WCAG 2.1 A and AA requirements with conformance levels and legal requirements.

Performing an Accessibility Audit with Testlio

Testlio delivered the accessibility report and helpfully grouped the issues into priority levels: high, medium, low, and WCAG level A (minimum accessibility) or AA (mid-range accessibility) checks. Stephen Wilkes, Product Manager, Royal Society of Chemistry noted that his team preferred the issues to be grouped, as it mirrored their existing development process; the team could easily place it on a matrix of effort and value.

Testers tested the 50 level A and AA success criteria for WCAG 2.1 on desktop through manual and automated testing methodologies. Example cases include:

• Testing manual color contrast and keyboard checks
• Screenreader testing: NonVisual Desktop Access and VoiceOver screen readers used for web products
• Open access payment gateway testing and checkout process.

In total, Testlio was able to deliver 13 significant issues – 6 level A and 7 level AA issues. 41 out of 50 WCAG checkpoints were passed (or not applicable).

Outcomes

The user-friendly report delivered at the end of testing meant that Nitu Goel, Head of QA, Royal Society of Chemistry, could quickly understand where the issues were and how we could fix them.

Less than three months later, RSC’s dev team took those groupings and issues and quickly sorted them into low/high impact/effort for prioritizing the development work. As of today, all bugs have been corrected. 

“It was an interesting and enjoyable introduction to accessibility testing. It was a smooth and easy process to set up testing, share the site and get it tested quickly, and get the results in a format that we could act upon quickly,”

Stephen Wilkes, Product Manager, Royal Society of Chemistry.

Investments in accessibility play a long game. RSC expects to see better user experiences, less abandonment, more authors using their platform – and expects to stay one step ahead of legislation.

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is slated to start monitoring and enacting all e-commerce and mobile sites within two years. Once enacted, the EAA will be the strictest corporate accessibility law to date. With less than two years to audits and a slew of product changes, the countdown is on for product owners to start auditing, improving, and putting accessibility at the forefront of products.

“Accessibility conformance testing of our licence and open access payment system aligns well with our commitment to ensure our products and services are inclusive of our whole research community and supports and welcomes their diversity, no matter who they are or where they are in the world.

Accessibility is a key aspect of that commitment, and this partnership allows us to deliver a digital experience accessible to a wide range of users, including those with disabilities.”

Dr Emma Wilson, Director of Publishing at the Royal Society of Chemistry