BNP Paribas PF & Creation Finance

Accessibility Auditing

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 began yearly audits of some of our older projects, starting with BNP Paribas Personal Finance and Creation Finance.

BNP Personal Finance

BNP Paribas Personal Finance is the power behind some of the UK's best-known high street brands through its consumer arm, Creation. It provides a range of retail finance, credit cards and loans to over four million customers. Haywyre has been a web development partner since 2001.

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

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.

Enhancing custom components for accessibility

We implemented updates including: connecting form elements with aria-describedby attributes, ensuring drop-down menus and checkboxes could be operated using only a keyboard, making help readily available to assistive technology users, adding bypass blocks to skip repeated content, and ensuring pages had descriptive titles and logical headings.

Template redesign

To maintain a consistent and user-friendly design across the entire website, we redesigned the page templates. These updates ensure that not only the current pages but also future additions adhere to WCAG standards.

Rechecking

Upon implementing these improvements, we conducted a comprehensive reassessment of the entire website and updated our accessibility report. This final testing phase involved manually testing each page with a range of assistive technologies.

Outcome

• A WCAG 2.1 AA standard website where every page has been tested to the required standard
• Accessible forms ensures fewer mistakes, saving BNP and customers time
• Reduced risk of legal issues due to mistakes on loan applications
• Alignment with regulatory accessibility requirements
• Increased trust from consumers
• Improved templates and components ensures new content will be consistent and compliant