Accessibility Review: IRCTC Next Generation Ticketing System portal

IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation) has recently revamped it’s portal and good news is that users do not require to login to check availability of tickets, search trains etc., Here is a quick review from accessibility prospective.

As the site loads, a banner appears talking about 48 months of NDA government but keyboard focus does not get to this banner and remains on IRCTC home page. However, using esc key closes the banner.

Looks like semantics are used as appropriate as possible. Buttons are marked up using correct attributes and have accessible names.

IRCTC Logo, Login, Register and icons to change font size are not operable using the keyboard.

There are several links with “More info” that are not descriptive

Focus indicator is missing for several elements such as Flights, stay, cab etc.,

It’s not recommended to use upper case letters as screen readers may consider them as acronyms.

There are several color contrast issues on the page; several images do not have alternate text. This is just a very quick text to see if accessibility has taken into consideration at all when re-designing the portal. While there was attempt to improve performance, IRCTC did not really considered improving accessibility. It’s time we the accessibility enthusiasts collectively reach out to them and have them address accessibility problems.