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Good practice Imported

A11y Playground — GovTech Singapore's Public Self-Assessment Tool for Inclusive Digital Design

Singapore · Singapore · See the Singapore profile · See the Singapore profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 23% 92/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

GovTech Singapore turned five years of an internal accessibility-awareness week into a public self-assessment tool combining a technical checklist, lived PwD stories and an interactive game, so any team can audit its own service before launch.

~150
Attendees at 2025 public launch event (29 July 2025)
6
Years running as an annual programme (2020-2025)
A11y Playground — GovTech Singapore's Public Self-Assessment Tool for Inclusive Digital Design

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech)
Period
2020–present (A11y Week since 2020; rebranded Inclusive Design Week and A11y Playground launched 29 July 2025)
Keywords
digital government, accessibility, co-design, public sector UX

Context

Since 2020, Singapore's Government Technology Agency (GovTech) has run an annual internal accessibility event, originally called A11y Week, to get public-sector designers and developers thinking about accessibility. In 2025 the agency rebranded it as Inclusive Design Week and, on 29 July 2025, launched it publicly at the Enabling Village with an accompanying self-assessment website, A11y Playground.

Objectives

GovTech frames the initiative explicitly as a shift from retrofitting accessibility after launch to designing it in from the start.

Activities

A11y Playground is a public, standing tool offering a technical checklist that lets any digital-service team assess how accessible their own product is, real-life stories from persons-with-disabilities (PwD) users describing concrete barriers, and an interactive game illustrating what those barriers feel like in practice. The 2025 launch event drew roughly 150 attendees spanning public- and private-sector inclusive-design advocates and members of the PwD community, with sessions re-examining common friction points like OTP authentication and QR-code flows through a PwD lens.

Results

The programme sits within Singapore's Enabling Masterplan 2030 and Smart Nation 2.0 strategy, giving it institutional backing beyond a single agency's initiative.

Conclusions

Its evidence to date is process- and adoption-based — an annual event now in its sixth year, plus a public tool — rather than a published measurement of how many services have since become more accessible as a result.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Delivered as an internal annual event plus a public self-assessment website; no cost figures published.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Running annually since 2020; public self-assessment tool and rebranded 'Inclusive Design Week' launched 29 July 2025.
Staffing & skills
GovTech Singapore (Government Technology Agency), Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI), Persons-with-disabilities (PwD) community contributors

Conditions for success

  • Institutional backing from national strategy (Enabling Masterplan 2030, Smart Nation 2.0)
  • Direct involvement of the PwD community in identifying real friction points
  • Framing accessibility as a design-in-from-the-start practice rather than a retrofit

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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