In April, the Digital Accessibility Team reached an important milestone, our fifth anniversary. We cannot quite believe how the time has flown. We started as a small team with a big ambition, and we have grown into a well-established function supporting accessibility right across the organisation.
Over the past five years we have worked with teams right across the Ministry of Justice.
In that time we have:
- received over 400 requests for accessibility advice and consultancy
- trained more than 1,500 people across the department
- built an Accessibility Champions Network of just over 130 members
- embedded senior accessibility specialists into the governance that shapes our services, from the teams that set our service standards and design system to the assurance points every new service has to pass through
Behind each of these numbers is a team, a service, and ultimately a better experience for the people who use our services. For many of them, an accessible service is the difference between accessing justice independently and not being able to at all.
Accessibility is a team sport
Our role is to support and collaborate, and the teams who come to us genuinely care about getting it right for all their users.
Consultancy remains our core service. We review services and work alongside teams to make them more accessible, and the feedback tells us it makes a real difference.
"Our partnership with accessibility specialists has fundamentally changed how we build. By embedding that expertise into the Design System and Website Builder, we are not just improving individual services, we are raising the bar for accessibility across the entire MoJ estate. It has helped us create more consistent, inclusive experiences while reducing the need for costly rework later." Service Owner, Central Digital
Putting our users first
User research sits at the heart of this. Our specialists help teams test with disabled users, prepare properly for research, and bring those insights back to product teams and stakeholders so that real user needs shape the work.
We also give teams access to full Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) audits through managed commercial contracts. A WCAG audit is a structured check of a website, app, or digital content to see how accessible it is for people with disabilities, and we use them to assess the accessibility of our own products and services.
We welcome colleagues from across the department onto our training courses too. These sessions are designed to build knowledge and confidence, and we are proud that people leave not just better informed but more motivated to act.
"Great presentation, everything was simple and clear. The exercises were well designed and easy to participate in. The pacing was excellent."
Training attendee
Through the Champions Network we have run a programme of events, including external visits, a workshop with a collaboration software provider, and our own three day internal accessibility conference.
"Having the accessibility champions meeting is a game changer, and the knowledge and information available is amazing. Alongside all the training on offer, the three day mini accessibility conference, and the one to one support for making documents accessible, it is brilliant." Director of Digital
Embedding a specialist into the Service Standards team has had a lasting effect on how services are assessed.
"The addition of a dedicated accessibility specialist into the Service Standards team has had a clear and lasting impact. Their expertise has helped shift accessibility from a compliance checkpoint to an integral part of how we assess services, bringing sharper insight, earlier challenge, and more consistent expectations." Service Standard Lead
We have never done this alone, and we never could
The people who made these five years count are the colleagues who chose to care, the ones who challenged us, and the ones who took this work into their own teams and beyond. Some started in our team and have gone on to create accessibility roles elsewhere, win promotions, and carry this work into other organisations. That is how change actually spreads.
The honest truth is that the work is never finished. A justice system is only as fair as its least accessible service. So we will keep going, because everyone has the right to use these services on their own terms, and that is worth another five years and more.
If you are working to make your own services more accessible, or you would just like to know more about what we do, please get in touch with us at accessibility@justice.gov.uk
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