Accessibility Review: Jobs for People with Disabilities portal by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India

Noticed that Department of Disability Affairs, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India has launched Job Portal for people with disabilities; which would aim to become a great portal for job seekers with disabilities, employers and training institutes. This is certainly a great initiative although I personally prefer to embed people with disabilities with mainstream job portal but this initiative certainly helps.

As an accessibility enthusiast, I wanted to look up the portal from accessibility prospective and below are my findings. Though I’m disturbed to see claim that this website is complied with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA; while it’s actually not. That said, I hope department will work with their developers and get the issues fixed.

Disclaimer:

1. This post is not to criticize the Government but to help ministry and developer know the problem and help them fix issues thus to make portal fully accessible.
2. This is not a complete accessibility report; this review can be used only as a reference
3. If visitors of this website notice any other issues related to accessibility or usability may please add them in the comments section or write directly to the ministry

Accessibility Assessment Findigns

1. Page title is inappropriate. Home page has “Index” as page title
2. Buttons provided for “small text, medium text and large text” does not convey it’s purpose
3. Color scheme buttons does not have accessibel name; also visual indication is not clear to identify expected color scheme.
4. When navigating through color schemes, screen reader reads for one tab stop as “www.disabilityjobs.gov.in “> and next next tab stop says “button link”
5. Login button does not have an accessible name
6. Login button does not have visible focus indicator
7. Placeholder text is provided as labels for “Enter email ID to register” and “Type password”; it’s not recommended to use placeholder as label for form elements.
8. Full “I agree to the terms and conditions” needs to be associated with check box.
9. Check box “I agree to the terms and conditions” does not have visible focus indicator.
10. Register button does not have accessible name
11. Register button does not have visible focus indicator
12. All form fields in Search jobs widget have placeholder as form labels and thus label goes away when user inserts data.
13. Search button does not have accessible name
14. Deprecated mark-up of marque is used for “No Payment to be made by applicant to any agency or employee.If someone ask for registration fee or any other cost please immediately bring to NHFDC notice”
15. Tab panel for Search jobs, Recruiter and Training institutes is not operable using keyboard
16. Location field (in all tabs) brings up a list of locations with checkboxes but not notified to screen reader and operable only after using a tab key from location field; futher there is no mechanism to dismiss this list before navigating through all location options. Notice Andaman and Nicobar has given as two seperate states!
17. Image link “Accessible India Campaign” (located between Create a job account and Join our employer” is not accessible using keyboard.
18. There is a button available to show / hide social media links (Facebook and Twitter) and same does not have an accessible name.
19. Photo gallery is not accessible using keyboard
20. There is no mechanism to pause / stop news scrolling.

For any further questions or clarifications of this post, please write to me at srinivasu.c(at)sgaccessibility(dot)com