BNP Paribas PF & Creation Finance

Haywyre has always prioritised functionality and ensuring our websites are accessible to everyone. Recognising the growing focus on online accessibility and in conformance to increasing industry standards, we’ve begun yearly audits of some of our older projects, starting with BNP Paribas Personal Finance and Creation Finance. This proactive approach underscores our commitment to continually improving accessibility standards and ensuring an inclusive online experience for everyone.

The primary goal was to audit the accessibility of the BNP and Creation websites, with a particular focus on the loan application journeys, to conform to updated industry accessibility requirements. We needed to pinpoint any areas where the sites were failing the WCAG 2.1 AA standard, and implement solutions that would bring the site to the updated industry standards. 

Accessibility testing

In the initial phase of this project, we conducted a thorough accessibility audit of both the BNP and Creation websites, meticulously assessing each page against the WCAG 2.1 guidelines. Our testing process involved a combination of manual checks and automated tools like Wave, WebAIM, and the Chrome Silktide accessibility plug-in. In particular we focused on the loans application journeys, ensuring that they could be completed with a range of assistive technologies, and that the content and instructions were simple enough for everyone to follow. Each journey was thoroughly checked from start to finish to flag any potential issues. From these assessments, we generated comprehensive reports and collaborated closely with BNP to address any identified concerns.

Enhancing custom components for accessibility

Having tested every single component for compatibility, we subsequently implemented updates to enhance their usability. This included:

• Ensuring that all form elements were appropriataely connected with aria-describedby attributes to provide error descriptions. 
• Making sure that drop-down menues and checkboxes could be easily navigated and operated using only a keyboard. 
• Ensuring that help was easily and readily available when required, and that it was available to assistive technology users – it is easy to overlook that help that is only available via hover, or pictures of how you are meant to fill it in with no text alternative for screen readers could cause frustration and errors. 
• Adding in bypass blocks to allow keyboard and assistive technology users to skip large blocks of repeated content. 
• Ensuring that pages and content were adequetly identifiable, with descriptive page titles and logical, informative headings.

In some cases this involved updating existing components to work better with assistive technologies, and in others it meant redesigning pages and components to work better for more people.

Template redesign

To maintain a consistent and user-friendly design across the entire website, we redesigned the page templates. These updates were meticulously crafted to ensure that not only the current pages but also future additions would adhere to WCAG standards, thus guaranteeing an inclusive experience for all users. This also worked for us, allowing us to build pages and add content faster and more easily than before! 

Rechecking

Upon implementing these improvements, we conducted a comprehensive reassessment of the entire website and updated our accessibility report of the site. This final testing phase was crucial in ensuring the whole site was fully accessible, and involved manually testing each page to ensure they work beautifully with a range of assistive technologies.

Future development

Not only did we achieve the desired WCAG standard for the whole site, but we used this as an opportunity to look at how we could continue to improve for future iterations of the site.

At Haywyre, we believe that digital accessibility isn’t just a checkbox to be marked—it’s a commitment to ensuring that every individual, regardless of their abilities, can engage with the digital world. While we are always proud of the work we put out, it is important to think of continuous improvement, and out accessibility audit exemplifies this. The digital landscape has evolved – as it should – and as software developers it is our duty to ensure that all our work is being updated to meeting these changing social and legal requirements. Looking back on our projects through a new focus such as accessibility allows us to contiuously improve not just our existing work, but future projects as well. 

I have found their work to be of a high standard and they keep up to date with the latest trends for online behaviour. I know that I will get a quick response to any questions whether I pick up the phone or send an email. […] Haywyre consistently provide creative options for web updates and are equally happy to work alongside other external agencies to make the web content really come to life. […] By having regular conference calls and with extensive use of project management software, updates for all of the projects get progressed with the minimum of fuss. Haywyre are super-responsive and prepared to go the extra mile to get things done in a timely manner.”

Craig, BNP Personal Finance