HMRC goes public on accessibility

HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) is the UK government department that collects direct and indirect taxes and pays benefits to individuals. This means that most adults are users of its services and this also means that it needs to provide equality of service to every adult in the UK. In particular it means that its IT Services should be accessible to people with disabilities.

HMRC has been aware of this requirement for a long time but was keen to review the situation and recommend improvements in the systems used and the processes involved in commissioning and developing new systems.

The latest stage in this process is the publishing of ‘HM Revenue and Customs, IT Accessibility Policy, Draft Equality Impact Assessment for Consultation’. To quote from the HMRC Accessibility Statement – What it should include.

A simple way to provide feedback should be included on every page of every system, with a specific category of accessibility.

Finally a bit of pedantry, i.e. and e.g. are not interchangeable and have been used in the wrong way in several places in the document.

Overall this is an extremely useful document and shows that HMRC are taking the issue very seriously. It would be great to see other public bodies going through a similar process.