Canadian COVID vaccination landing pages — how accessible are they to people with disabilities?

During my last appearance on the Now with Dave Brown morning show in March, we spoke a fair bit about the general lack of inclusion of websites that cover the pandemic, and how difficult it is for citizens with disabilities to find information related to the Coronavirus in a somewhat accessible format.

Dave and I also wrapped up that discussion by brainstorming ideas people could consider adopting, when they run into websites that are clearly lacking from an accessibility standpoint, such as reaching out to the faulty organizations to share some constructive feedback about the challenges or barriers faced.

Since then, the enthusiasm around vaccination and the increasing demand from citizens to get on a waiting list to finally get their shots has exponentially grown. So, for this month’s installment, I thought it might be interesting to take a quick look at provincial main vaccination entry points to check how, when, and where people could get their shots.

Luckily, a web page on Canada.ca conveniently identifies the landing pages for each province and territory, so it was a piece of cake to find the information I was looking for, and run a few basic accessibility tests, to identify how inclusive the vaccination campaign truly was for people with disabilities.

I wish I could tell you that what I found out was pretty surprising, but when you work in the field of digital accessibility, you get used to disappointments pretty quickly. As I’ve pointed out a few times this past year, we as a society are only as strong as our weakest links… After all, if we don’t make sure that information about COVID vaccines is provided in a format that is accessible to everyone, then not only do we make it harder for some people to get on a vaccination waiting list, but we’re also reminding those same people that they didn’t matter enough for the rest of us to make sure they were also being cared for.

If we don’t make sure that information about COVID vaccines is provided in a format that is accessible to everyone, then not only do we make it harder for some people to get on a vaccination waiting list, but we’re also reminding those same people that they didn’t matter enough for the rest of us to make sure they were also being cared for.

The websites

So, with that goal in mind, I made my way to Google and easily found a section on Canada.ca dedicated to the Coronavirus. From there, a section related to vaccines, with a big prominent link on how to get vaccinated or registered.

Following that link, I found a page where each province and territory had its main entry point identified. The links to the landing page for each province and territory is presented below:

• Alberta
• British Columbia
• Manitoba
• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland and Labrador
• Northwest Territories
• Nova Scotia
• Nunavut
• Ontario
• Prince Edward Island
• Quebec
• Saskatchewan
• Yukon

With this list in hand, all I needed to do moving forward was run a few tools through each one of those landing pages to get a sense of their respective level of conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, as well as other relevant considerations that make for more inclusive online experience.

The methodology

Every province or territory is free to organize information as they see fit, so some landing pages share more information on a single page while others break down their information over multiple screens. Therefore, benchmarking those pages would not exactly be fair, or representative.

This is why I chose not to compare or benchmark them, or even attempt to rank them from best to worst. Comparing apples to oranges would only muddy the waters even more.

Instead, what I decided to do was highlight some of the most common issues I could find, in the hopes of enlightening everyone to sharpen their own observation skills when it came to digital accessibility. Also, for the sake of containing this effort, I chose to only rely on a series of popular automated or semi-automated tools that are available for free, in order to keep this within reach of anyone who would like to run a similar effort to maybe share their findings with organizations faulty of creating inaccessible contents.

And for anyone wondering, going over all 13 landing pages with these tools took me about 2 hours total, including the time it took to organize my methodology. So this is something anyone can do in very little time…

Of course, some expertise in this field certainly helps, but the tools themselves do almost all of the heavy lifting.

The tools

The tools I chose to use for this were:

• Google Lighthouse, available natively in the developer tools of the Chrome browser or as a browser extension,
• Axe DevTools, developed by Deque Systems and available as a browser plugin for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge,
• Wave, developed by WebAIM, and available as a browser extension in Chrome and Firefox,
• Landmarks, developed by Matthew Tylee Atkinson, and available as a Chrome browser extension,
• Hemingway App, developed by Adam and Ben Long, and available as an online service,
• My keyboard! To check whether a link to skip straight to the main content of the page is made available.

Of course, there’s a lot more to evaluating the level of accessibility of digital content than just what these tools can find. But as a starting point to get a feel of how inclusive any of those pages are, this proves to be a solid enough starting point.

Just running these tools on all thirteen landing pages, here’s what I could find.

The findings

Right off the bat, I want to say that since these pages are all maintained by a provincial government entity, they are, by their very nature, more accessible than most. But being “more accessible than most” is not enough when your role is to serve the general public, especially in a context as dramatic as this one (allowing the population to easily get vaccinated against COVID-19).

But being “more accessible than most” is not enough when your role is to serve the general public, especially in a context as dramatic as this one (allowing the population to easily get vaccinated against COVID-19).

And while most provinces and territories these days have some form of accessibility guidelines that govern them, we as the public should be entitled to expect nothing but the most accessible outcomes in this particular scenario.

For those of you interested in the data, I’ve put together a quick spreadsheet showing the findings.

Using Google Lighthouse

It’s a well-documented fact that a high Google Lighthouse accessibility score is not a real indication of a page being truly accessible, as automated tools can only look for so many of the aspects that make for an accessible online experience.

Yet, as a way to quickly asset if most of the basics have been taken care of, I still believe Lighthouse has its value and often will recommend it as a very first starting point for most people who want to get a sense of how accessible a web page is.

In this particular research, all thirteen pages range from perfect scores of 100 (like Canada.ca and the provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Saskatchewan), to the lowest scores being 89 and 83 (respectively, New Brunswick and Northwest Territories).

Using Axe DevTools

I’ll be transparent here, Axe DevTools is by far my favorite automated accessibility tool, and this is not only because Deque systems had been my main client for over 8 years.

I’ve grown to love Axe for its commitment to not blur the findings with false positives, its very accurate interpretation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as well as Deque’s decision to make the axe-core rule set open source. While this tool is better suited for people who enjoy dabbling with HTML, its user interface also makes it very easy to get the gist of accessibility problems without having to dive too deep into the source code.

Findings from these tests highlight a few landing pages such as Canada.ca, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Saskatchewan showing up as “axe-clean” (devoid of basic accessibility issues), while other pages have a number of issues varying from just a few to quite a bit for Nunavut, coming in last with 38 issues (37 of which are based on color contrast problems).

Note that the number of issues is not an indication of the severity of these issues, and therefore fewer issues do not necessarily equate to an easier experience browsing the content.

Using WAVE

Wave by WebAIM is another great tool used by many to find basic accessibility issues. Most people enjoy using Wave in large part because it’s a very visual tool that leverages a nice set of icons to indicate the types of problems.

Though arguably, for colorblind people like me, color coded-icons make it much less appealing… But if you’re not into code all that much, I see it as a great alternative to Axe presented above. WebAIM has its own set of interpretations of the guidelines weaved into the tool, and while some of the findings are a bit debatable and could be viewed as opinionated every now and then, it is still an excellent tool that I highly recommend to anyone who is less comfortable working directly with HTML code.

Findings from this tool highlight a few landing pages such as Canada.ca, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Yukon as having zero issues, and pages such as Northwest Territories and Nunavut, showing up with 9 issues each. Surprisingly, Ontario comes in last with this tool with a total of 12 issues. But to be fair, all those issues relate to the same problem, which is lumped under a single issue with Axe DevTools.

So in reality, it’s not as bad as it may seem for the province known for its very aggressive take on accessibility laws with the world-renowned Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).

Using Landmarks

Imagine being blind, and having to explore a web page using a screen reader — a piece of assistive software that reads the content out to you. In the early days of the web, navigating content with a severe visual impairment and a piece of assistive technology likely meant a very linear and sequential process. But this doesn’t have to be the way anymore.

For those of you wondering what landmarks may be, think of landmarks as a way for someone using assistive technologies to be able to easily identify different parts of regions or sections of a page — such as the header, the main content, or the footer — and then jump straight to those, instead of going down the content element by element.

Needless to say, taking advantage of landmarks on a web page can be an absolute blessing, as long as they are implemented properly! Thankfully, when it comes to our 13 landing pages here, every one of them makes rather decent use of landmarks, which ultimately means an easier experience for people leveraging assistive technologies to consume information online.

For the sake of this exercise, I was not really interested in just how pristine the use of landmarks was, but rather, if they were being used at all. So seeing every province and territory making good use of them was a nice surprise.

Using the keyboard

Beyond the use of landmarks, which is typically not something that can be easily leveraged by sighted users who have mobility impairments, I also wanted to check whether these same landing pages also allowed users to navigate to the main content of the page easily.

Navigating with the keyboard alone and having to go through every link or form control from the header, the main navigation menu, and possibly the left sidebar before finally getting to the main content can be quite frustrating, not to mention physically painful for those who suffer from arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome.

The only test I ran without an actual application, this one was also very simple to conduct. All I needed to do was use my TAB key repeatedly, and verify whether one of the very first tab stops on the page displayed or reached some kind of a “skip to main content” link.

Such links are extremely common on accessible pages, and to my surprise, some of the landing pages such as the ones from New Brunswick, Northwest Territories, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec did not offer one.

Using Hemingway App

Finally, an often overlooked aspect of accessibility that is also extremely easy to test for relates to the complexity of the copy presented on the pages. In essence, can the average Canadian even understand the directives presented on the pages to figure out what the steps are in order to get on a vaccine waiting list?

Indeed, what good would an accessible website do if the person consulting it cannot even understand the words written on the page, because the copy is overly complex? According to Statistics Canada and an article from the CBC published in early 2021, more than half of working-age Canadians still struggle with reading, and more than one in six adult Canadians fall short of passing the most basic set of literacy tests.

To reflect this reality, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and general plain language principles recommend sticking to copy that does not require reading abilities that are more advanced than the lower secondary education level, which roughly translates to 9th or 10th grade.

A tool like the Hemingway App effectively measures the complexity of the copy, looking at such things as complexity of the words used, length of sentences, use of passive voice, etc. Thanks to its algorithm, the app can then attribute a grade level to the copy and helps authors rewrite their content to make it more inclusive of everyone.

In this case, most landing pages scored rather well, with the lowest reading level equating to grade 4 (Yukon) and the highest levels being 11 for Manitoba and Saskatchewan… which is still pretty acceptable.

In closing

As I mentioned earlier, these very high-level tests were conducted in less than 2 hours, and as any accessibility expert will tell you, spending an average of 9 minutes per page cannot possibly reveal how accessible a web page is.

There is a lot more that would need to be done in order to truly evaluate how accessible these landing pages are, but only with these very basic tests, some obvious problems arise on most of them, as indicated by the Axe DevTools and Wave findings. However, if anyone involved with the creation or maintenance of these pages stumbles on this post, hopefully, the elements I’ve raised can become starting points to improve the content.

I think most Canadians would agree that it’s in everyone’s best interest that access to vaccines be facilitated as much as possible for all of our population. Making the content of those landing pages, as well as all their related pages, accessible to people with disabilities, is not only a good way to make everyone feel welcomed and cared for, it’s also a great way to make sure that every link in the Canadian chain is as strong as we need it to be to finally control the pandemic.