Helping Vision RCL design an accessible website for all users

Vision Redbridge Culture and Leisure (Vision RCL) is an independent, non-profit charitable trust working in partnership with the London Borough of Redbridge, UK.

Its core mission is to manage and deliver a wide range of leisure and cultural services for the local community, operating in partnership with the local council to promote health, wellbeing, learning, and cultural engagement.
VisionRCL is involved in:

• Leisure & Wellbeing: Operating sports and leisure facilities, including gyms, swimming pools, and offering various group exercise classes and health & wellbeing programmes.
• Culture & Learning: Managing the borough’s libraries (offering digital services, resources, and community support) and are involved in arts, music, and theatre events and facilities.
• Parks & Open Spaces: Managing the local parks, open spaces, and allotments, often including the grounds maintenance and sports pitches within them.
• Social Purpose: As a charity, any surplus generated is reinvested back into the community to improve the quality of the facilities and services offered to local residents.

The Project

Vision RCL is undergoing a significant redevelopment and rebrand of its current website to improve the structure and usability for its customers. Its new redesign will allow for wider ranges of customers to access local services by the following:

• Seamless digital experience across the website to be more integrated and user-friendly across all services. The site will focus on Simplicity, Accessibility, and human-centred design
• Will allows customers to conduct daily tasks in a more efficient way. The site will be more intuitive and allow easier bookings.
• The website will focus on five new wellness Pillars to help consumers find activities based on their needs
  • Connection, Movement, Mindfulness, creativity, learning

What we did:

Phase 1 – Design

The Head of Accessibility at Ten10 engaged in initial discussions with the Head of customer experience and Digital at Vision RCL to understand the specific accessibility needs and compliance requirements. It was clear that Vision RCL would greatly benefit from a proactive, shift left approach, validating design and user journeys early in the development lifecycle. This strategy was crucial to ensure Vision RCL could build an inherently compliant website from the beginning, rather than identifying and remediating issues just before the site went live. This early intervention would save significant time and resources, preventing costly last-minute fixes.

Based on the number of user journeys, the variety of target platforms, and the level of reporting and advisory support required, Vision RCL selected a Bespoke Accessibility Package, tailored to include initial design reviews. This comprehensive solution was identified as the most suitable choice to meet their specific needs, not only for providing a robust framework for ensuring a highly accessible digital experience but also for ensuring the new Wellness Pillars (Connection, Movement, Mindfulness, Creativity, Learning) were inherently usable and discoverable by all customers, regardless of assistive technology.

Ten10 initiated the testing audit by performing an intensive two-day design review. This early-stage analysis allowed our accessibility experts to evaluate the proposed UI/UX designs against critical WCAG standards. By focusing on common and high-priority violations, we successfully pinpointed the three most significant risk areas for non-compliance. These findings were presented to Vision RCL with supporting visual evidence (videos and screenshots). This pre-development intervention provided Vision RCL the crucial opportunity to mitigate accessibility issues at the design level, dramatically reducing the risk of costly rework later in the development lifecycle.

Phase 2 – Comprehensive Audit

Six months after the initial design review, Ten10 performed a full WCAG 2.2, level-AA accessibility audit utilising multi tools and browser/device combinations across the website, including the leisure, libraries, and theatre sections. This thorough evaluation identified a total of 28 defects, which were carefully categorised by severity: 8 defects at Level A and 20 defects at Level AA. The below table highlights the prioritisation of defects identified.

The detailed report provided Vision RCL with a clear roadmap for remediation, ensuring there were easy-to-follow steps to reproduce for the development and UI teams.

Phase 3 – Remediation and Retest

Upon Vision RCL’s successful resolution of the initial non-compliant findings, Ten10 was engaged to conduct a targeted compliance retest across the complete range of WCAG standards. This efficient evaluation focused on the 28 remediated defects and was completed within three working days. The audit report was subsequently updated to provide a clear, finalised status of all issues, highlighting any remaining items for focused remediation.

This collaborative and forward-thinking partnership successfully embedded accessibility into Vision RCL’s core digital platform, ensuring a highly inclusive, compliant website that will serve the diverse community of Redbridge well into the future.

The Challenge

A key challenge identified during the accessibility remediation was the inherent diversity and uniqueness of Vision RCL’s services. Each distinct service area comes with its own specific operational requirements, content formats, and end-user needs. This complexity made it challenging to establish a unified approach for presenting information in a manner that was both engaging for the user and fully compliant with accessibility standards. Consequently, tailoring the platform’s design and functionality to accommodate these varied and specific requirements — especially for areas like multimedia, specific form types, or complex data visualisations — required focused, bespoke solutions. Vision RCL has since incorporated the remediation of these highly unique, service-specific defects into the scope of the next release to ensure both maximum engagement and full accessibility compliance.

The Results

The accessibility audit was a critical component of Vision RCL ‘s digital transformation and rebrand program. By integrating the accessibility audit, Vision RCL proactively ensured that their new digital presence would be compliant and inclusive from the very foundation.

Benefits of early intervention

Our early-stage review and guidance delivered substantial, immediate value across the project lifecycle:

• Resource and Time Efficiency: Conducting an accessibility review during the early design phase was instrumental in preventing costly last-minute fixes. This saved Vision RCL significant time and resources by addressing potential failures (Defects) before they became deeply embedded in the development process, upholding the principle that “fixing early is cheaper than fixing late.”
• Structural Consistency and Flow: The audit resulted in the new site having a consistent structure and flow across all areas. This ensures a predictable and intuitive user experience, which is paramount for accessibility and general usability.
• Systemic Quality Improvement: A key success factor was the ability to apply lessons learned across the entire digital ecosystem. Defects identified in specific areas, such as the leisure site, were systematically reviewed and implemented throughout the site before the content population. This ensured that core structural and functional accessibility improvements benefitted every page and user, establishing a high, baseline quality standard for the entire platform.

This proactive approach ensured that accessibility was not an afterthought, but a core foundational pillar of Vision RCL’s new, evolving digital experience.

Vision RCL have also integrated advanced accessibility features to ensure the website is inclusive:

• Recite Me Toolbar: They have added this cloud-based software that allows visitors to customise the website’s view. Users can:
  • Have the text read aloud (including PDFs)
  • Change font sizes, colours, and background colours
  • Translate text into over 100 different languages
  • Access a fully integrated dictionary and thesaurus
  • The site meets standards that allow users to zoom in up to 400% and navigate using just a keyboard or a screen reader

In summary, the transition moves Vision RCL from a collection of facility websites to an integrated, modern, and highly accessible “local wellness partner” digital platform, with a strong emphasis on user experience, AI-readiness, and community well-being.