2025 Accessibility round-up

2025 has been a significant year for digital accessibility. Across the public sector, expectations rose, standards matured, and accessibility moved from a specialist conversation to an essential part of how services are delivered.

As the year comes to a close, one theme has stood out to me across all our work at focusgov: accessibility continues to matter deeply to the people who use public services. Whether supporting families, care-experienced young people, vulnerable adults, or professionals, accessibility has remained one of the most consistently valued aspects of digital design.

What We Heard From Users This Year

In user testing across multiple projects, accessibility surfaced again and again as a priority. People asked for clearer journeys, simpler language, more predictable layouts and content they could understand without effort. For many, these aren’t “nice features”; they are essential to feeling confident in understanding essential information. 
This feedback reinforced what we already believe: accessible design improves outcomes for everyone, and it strengthens trust in the services our clients provide.

Supporting a Wide Range of Clients With Accessibility

We are proud to work with a diverse group of organisations, each with different audiences but a shared commitment to making their digital services easier to use.

Accessibility audits completed in 2025 included:

• Achieving for Children – reviewing their services that support children and families to live happy, healthy and successful lives.
• Brighton and Hove City Council – assessing the accessibility of their Care Leavers App, which helps young people transition to independence.
• Royal Borough of Greenwich – auditing and performing the fixes for the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information, Advice and Support Service (SENDIASS) website supporting children, young people aged 0–25 and parents with education, health and care guidance.
• Hartlepool Borough Council – reviewing the accessibility of the Hartlepool Now platform, helping residents including vulnerable adults find information, events and support in their community.
• The Kets de Vries Institute (KDVI) – ensuring their diagnostic tools platform supports coaches, leaders and organisations worldwide with a more inclusive and accessible experience.

 
Across all of these, we saw the same pattern: small accessibility improvements often created significant benefits for users.

Practical Accessibility Support Beyond Audits

Alongside formal audits, many clients leant on us this year for practical help in embedding accessibility into their everyday processes. This included:

• Accessibility best-practice resources and support on design, content and structure
• CMS video tutorials with clear guidance for admins on creating and uploading accessible content
• Co-production workshops designed inclusively so that participants with visual impairments could take part fully and comfortably, contributing equally to visual design aspects 

We greatly value the trust our clients place in us, and we’re proud to support teams who genuinely want to do right by their users.

Looking Ahead to 2026

We are grateful to all our clients for recognising the importance of accessibility and for working with us to build services that include everyone. We're excited to continue sharing knowledge, raising awareness and supporting even more teams in 2026.

Several accessibility audits are already booked into the diary for the new year, and we’ll be continuing to strengthen our own skills too - with particular focus on how AI can support accessibility responsibly, and on deepening our work around designing for neurodiversity.

Thank you to everyone who has partnered with us this year. Here’s to another year of creating digital services that are clearer, kinder and genuinely accessible to all.