Our Accessibility Manual is now live

a woman working on a laptop

The guides in this accessibility manual help us all take a consistent and effective approach to accessibility

The dxw Accessibility Manual is now live. Like our company Playbook, the Accessibility Manual is open for everyone. Feel free to share the manual with colleagues, clients, and friends.

The aim of the manual is to explain why accessibility is important at dxw, educate people on the principles of accessibility and give people practical advice on how to make services more accessible as they design and build. 

The first version of the Accessibility Manual has information on:

Interaction designer and accessibility specialist, Calum Ryan, came up with the idea for a dxw Accessibility Manual in 2023. Calum saw the opportunity and need for us to document our internal accessibility practice at dxw. He was inspired by other teams and their accessibility manuals, like the DWP Accessibility Manual from the Accessibility team at Department for Work and Pensions and the United States government’s Accessibility for Teams resource.

Continued work on the accessibility manual

Our accessibility manual is by no means a complete piece of work and remains a living document. We will continue to improve it and write new content that remains relevant as guidelines and approaches change to make the web more accessible and inclusive.

It won’t just be a collection of how-to guides. We hope to share case studies and examples of our approaches to great work in accessibility. We’ve done research across disciplines to understand the challenges and needs of dxw’ers when it comes to designing and building accessible services. And we’ll continue monitoring how people use the manual and what can be improved.

“One of my main focuses of learning and development has been to help make the web more accessible for everyone as well as grow a culture of accessibility throughout the organisation.”

Calum Ryan, interaction designer and accessibility specialist

Let us know what you think

We have a feedback form in the Accessibility Manual. If you take a look or use the manual, let us know what you think. All feedback is welcome because it will tell us what’s good or what can be improved. 

You can also contribute to the Accessibility Manual, like you can with our Playbook, as both use a content management system linked to GitHub which can be accessed by any GitHub account. 

Thanks to

This work would not have been possible without the time and dedication by our people who spared their dxw time to contribute to the manual over the past year. A huge thanks to those that made it happen: