Making airline booking accessible for all

The challenge

Due to new US legislation, Emirates needed to make their website accessible to WCAG 2.0 Level AA standard. And, they only had 9 months to get 7 core features of the site accessible and a further year after that to make the rest of the website accessible.

Our approach

We initially performed an accessibility audit of the site to provide a baseline of the challenge ahead and to lay the foundation of the areas that needed to be improved on. The findings were presented back to the senior management and the various teams involved. From this, the following work took place as part of a planned engagement to tackle accessibility:

• We reviewed, recommended and implemented an automated accessibility management tool – allowing the test team to quickly identify accessibility issues.
• We created and delivered a set of bespoke training programmes for the testing and development teams involved – so they could understand, test and develop an accessible web experience.
• We provided remote and on-site support for the Emirates in-house test and development teams, as well as their external partners and agencies responsible for delivering the site. The extended periods onsite allowed for us to provide expert advice quickly and efficiently as well as shaping decisions on how to proceed.
• We managed (and worked with charities) to perform testing with disabled people in the US to further highlight the level of accessibility and to identify issues that went beyond technical compliance.

The result

The initial work meant that Emirates could quickly and efficiently create a more accessible web experience and get quickly up to speed with a detailed list of improvements as well as the means to make those improvements.

Our engagement over the two year time period, meant that we could provide timely advice and steer both strategy and delivery as needed.