Potential accessibility issue with date field pattern

[JonathanCulling]

What

I have recently been conducting accessibility research with Assistive Technology users on our service, which was built using the Gov.uk Design System. Our service is in public Beta, and it can be found at https://www.support-with-employee-health-and-disability.dwp.gov.uk/support-with-employee-health-and-disability

Why

We interviewed 2 blind JAWS (screen reader) users and both had problems inputting a date into our system. Both had suggestions, based on their experience using other websites, about how date entry could be clearer for them and error free.

Anything else

I have attached a slide from my report co

vering this potential issue. Please can someone let me know if we could take this feedback into consideration and update the design standard?

[querkmachine]

Hello! Thanks for your feedback. I'm going to shift this over to our Frontend repository. We have an ongoing discussion about date inputs here: alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog#42.

We have also previously published a blog post with our findings using dropdowns for date input. There we found that they presented more problems for users compared to text inputs: https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2013/12/05/asking-for-a-date-of-birth/

[stevenjmesser]

Hi @JonathanCulling, do you have an indication of the proportion of users affected in your testing? How many users in total did you test with? What percentage of those users were using JAWS?

Trying to establish whether this is a finding where all JAWS users encounter the same problem or only a proportion do. That will help in assessing it alongside other issues.

Please do let us know. If we don't hear back in 2 weeks' time we'll close this issue, but it is linked to the ongoing discussion so will be reviewed (as previously mentioned).

[JonathanCulling]

Hello Steven,
We conducted face-to-face research with 11 AT users, 10 of whom used some form of screen reader. Of these:
• 2 JAWS readers had the problem identified,
• 8 users of other screen readers (NVDA, Voiceover, Read&Write, Microsoft built-in screenreader) did not.