The pilot project for the chatbot named Cari took place in September 2026. Cari fails against a number of WCAG 2.2 level A and AA criteria.
Labels and names
The following issues were identified:
- Labelling of some names are not the same as the accessible names, so voice control users cannot activate functions, for example ‘Start chat’ and ‘About the chat’, and ‘type your message’
- Some aria labelling is incorrect so screen reader software may not pick up the meaning
- The Beta label is marked as a heading incorrectly
- The ‘Read more’ button does not update to match its visible label when expanded
- The ‘Send message’ icon does not have a text alternative
- Aria labelling needs to be consistent with the name and be a human readable name
- The chat window’s ‘Before we start’ name reads out all of the content making it unclear how to navigate
- Announcements are being made twice for every message
- The ‘bot is typing’ loading indicator appears with no status message. It should announce to screen readers that the bot is typing
Colour contrast
The following issues were identified:
- The dotted focus indicator does not have sufficient colour contrast against its background
- Some areas do not have sufficient text contrast against their background
- The ‘Send message’ icon does not have a text alternative
- Aria labelling needs to be consistent with the name and be a human readable name
- Links and buttons do not have enough colour contrast
- The ‘unable to connect’ error text has insufficient colour contrast
Focus order
The following issues were identified:
- Activating ‘Start chat’ moves the focus to the reply option buttons and misses the message content
- Selecting ‘No, I want to continue the chat’ causes the focus to return to the top of the page
Zoom and text size
The following issues were identified:
- The top of the chatbot window is cut off when zoomed past 150%
- When text spacing is adjusted to WCAG standards part of the ‘Start chat’ button gets cut off
The accessibility issues have been raised and a time frame for fixing them will be put into place.