Finding Out About Adult Social Care Services from the NEW Worcestershire County Council Website
Download (PDF 710.72 KB)Summary of report content
Healthwatch Worcestershire reprised their 2019 mystery shopping exercise of the adequacy of social care information on Worcestershire County Council’s new beta website. The mystery shopping exercise took place in January 2023 and involved Healthwatch volunteers assessing the information and how it was presented using a variety of scenarios.
Healthwatch Worcestershire could see that the information on the website and how it was presented had improved since 2019. Some of their shoppers were able to find the information that they were looking for with relative ease, and found the navigation simpler than in the previous site.
However, many shoppers encountered real difficulties with navigating the site and finding the information they needed. These included:
The language used in the information sometimes included terms that wouldn’t be known by everyone.
The search function didn’t help users to hone down to the content that they needed. The search function is obviously very important as it is the way that many people will first choose
There were problems with navigation on the website. The way that information was titled did not at times help the mystery shoppers to find the information needed, as the title did not reflect the content that they were expecting.
The useful links section needed work to ensure it included all useful sources of help.
Whilst there is good information about Care Act needs assessments on the website, there were pages where the shoppers would have expected to find links to this information but did not do so.
A key issue for the mystery shoppers was their ability to contact the Council from the website. Some felt that the requirement to register/log in to the online portal and give consent may be hurdles to proceeding. Some wondered what a ‘portal’ was, and whether more user friendly language could be used. Many wanted to speak to someone. The telephone contact number for Adult Social Care was not easy to find.
The shoppers did not always find information in relevant sections about the availability of advocacy, translation and interpreting services.
One of the shoppers who is blind assessed the website general accessibility to someone who uses a screen reader. Positives were that, once a relevant section had been located, the information found was accessible to their JAWS screen reader. However some of the difficulties encountered included: the screen reader seemed unable to activate the menu of different options for how search results are displayed; not all search results appear as ‘headers’ – so the screen reader is unable to use the title as a hyperlink to the appropriate page; navigating through the site was difficult, particularly as our shopper was frequently unable to find a way to get back to the page before using ‘hot key’ keyboard commands on the screen reader.
A number of the shoppers commented on the small size of the font on the website. No one reported that they had found the accessibility tool that would enable them to enlarge this.
The report makes a number of recommendations on how to improve the website content and functionality.