Skip to main content

Ensuring that dental recruitment and job search is accessible to all

Written by: Alison Price
Published on: 17 Mar 2021

Accessibility article

Since accessibility guidelines were launched in December 2008, companies have been required to work towards making their public facing platforms usable by all to the same standards - Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from W3C. And by June 23 this year, the UK Government has mandated that WCAG 2.1 level AA should be adopted for all public sector sites to ensure that they will have a good defense against any legal action.

Here, at BDJ Jobs, having partnered with Madgex to provide our jobs board for the dental sector, we can confirm that we are delivering the most accessible jobs board on the market. That combined with our parent company, Springer Nature’s, commitment to the aims of the Valuable 500, we’re guaranteeing that we’ll actively continue to improve our platforms to provide the best possible services to our audiences, on behalf of the British Dental Association.

What improvements have been implemented by Madgex?

The bulleted list below, along with updates to HTML, CSS and javascript demonstrates the best practice applied by Madgex to the platform in delivering gold standard accessibility across all devices, achieving WCAG AA standard and compliance with alternative guidelines, such as US Section 508

  • Audit and a schedule of ongoing improvements, including usability testing, ensuring that our entire audience has the equal ability to search for roles and post roles
  • Improvements to shortlist/save buttons to include job titles for screen readers
  • Added better grouping for checkboxes for screen readers
  • Added 'required' indicator for required form fields for screen readers
  • Improved search employers box for screen readers
  • Improved the validation of account creation form: the summary box above the form now shows validation errors and each includes a clickable link to the corresponding field
  • Made the Search jobs h1 more accessible for screen readers
  • Improved accessibility of icons and logos
  • Removed some icons for screen readers where the corresponding information is unhelpful
  • Added descriptive text to application links on the 'my jobs' section for screen readers
  • Improved the description of the rich text editor for screen readers
  • Small improvement to the alignment of the employer profile, 'job alert quick sign up' button
  • Improved contrast for logged in employers when displaying total live job count

All of these improvements provide a workable interface for all jobseekers, who frequently access our site from different devices depending on where they happen to be. And makes posting a role easier for the recruiter at the same time.

If you’re currently searching for your next role, we have many articles offering you advice and support, to aid the process - and of course thousands of live roles at all levels throughout the UK.