Call for proposals: a toolkit to help the global civic tech community fix common accessibility challenges

Now closed – applicants have been informed of outcomes

In one sentence

TICTeC Action Lab #2 is looking for an individual, organisation or joint team to produce a resource to support the global civic tech community in fixing common accessibility challenges.

About TICTeC Action Lab #2

As part of the TICTeC Labs programme, mySociety convened the TICTeC Action Lab #2 working group in order to take ideas raised at Civic Tech Surgery #2 forward, and decide together what piece of work would be useful to commission to help civic tech organisations around the world to fix common accessibility challenges.

The TICTeC Labs programme is looking at six key dilemmas facing civic tech. The second topic was ensuring civic tech is accessible – how can we lead and popularise best practice? TICTeC Action Lab #2 is comprised of 6 individuals from across the world, who between them have many years of experience working on civic tech and/or the issues that surround the accessibility of civic tech. You can read more about Action Lab #2 members here.

About this project

TICTeC Action Lab #2 members agreed to commission a piece of work that will help the global civic tech community fix common accessibility challenges. Specifically, they are looking for an individual, organisation or team to create a ‘toolkit’ or resource to support civic tech practitioners in making their work more accessible.

Some suggestions from the group as to what a toolkit could include are:

  • guidance or templates on how to approach accessibility
  • guidance on what accessibility means
  • how to make accessibility understandable to whole organisations
  • top tips to make impactful changes
  • details of organisations and funders who can help
  • where to access good quality training and communities of practice
  • a literature review of existing guidance, highlighting good practices and failures.
  • a guide for content writers on how to communicate simply/in multiple languages taking into account the possible contextual constraints and attributes of a place.
  • guidance on good practice for specific elements of accessibility e.g. how to best describe/provide alt text for maps and visualisations
  • identifying enablers, drivers and inhibitors to improving accessibility
  • consideration of the different ways people interact with content, i.e. not just websites but also e.g. social media, messaging services, non-digital content.

We do not expect any one application to cover all of these areas – please let us know in your application which aspect(s) you intend to cover.

The group are keen that the resource should be co-created with users and that people with different accessibility needs either lead or are closely involved in the process. Your application should include details of how your resource will be co-created.

They are open to different formats for the resource – it doesn’t necessarily need to be a website or guide, and we welcome innovative ideas about how to deliver the content. Above all, we want the work to be as accessible as possible to ensure it can be easily used in practice. We ask applicants to let us know what approach they will take in their application.

There is up to $3760 USD (inclusive of taxes) available for this work.

What happens after the project

We intend to publish the work you produce, credited to you, on the TICTeC and mySociety website, licensed under a Creative Commons licence. We may make some light edits (beyond proofreading) before we publish. You will be free to make publicly available your own version should you wish to, and any other material based on the research you conducted. The project will then be disseminated by TICTeC Action Lab members, the TICTeC Labs Steering group, and the TICTeC community to ensure it’s used as much as possible. 

mySociety will convene a ‘report back’ event at the end of the TICTeC Labs programme to discuss how the programme went and the work commissioned by the programme and its participants. Authors of commissioned work will be invited to attend to present their work.

Any questions?

Please send any queries or questions to tictec@mysociety.org