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Good practice Imported

Ísland.is — Iceland's Award-Winning Digital Government Portal and Its Still-Unenacted Accessibility Law

Iceland · Reykjavík · See the Iceland profile · See the Reykjavík profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 55% 72/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Iceland's one-stop citizen portal, Ísland.is, won a 2023 World Summit Award for combining efficient e-government with accessibility for disabled users — even though the WCAG 2.0 AA legislation the government proposed back in 2012 still hasn't been enacted.

Ísland.is — Iceland's Award-Winning Digital Government Portal and Its Still-Unenacted Accessibility Law

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Stafrænt Ísland (Digital Iceland), Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs
Period
2008–present
Keywords
e-government, public digital services, accessibility, ministry of finance

Context

Island.is, run by Stafraent Island (Digital Iceland) under Iceland's Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, is the country's single sign-on portal for government information, service applications and tracking.

Activities

Accessibility guidelines (first published 2008, updated 2012/2014) commit to WCAG Level AA compliance as a baseline, assigning responsibilities to managers, designers and developers, and using Siteimprove, WAVE and aXe to test for issues affecting a wide range of users.

Results

In 2023 the platform received a World Summit Award in the Government & Citizen Engagement category, with the jury citing efficiency gains and a 'high level of accessibility regardless of location or disability.'

Conclusions

In October 2012 the government announced plans to legislate mandatory WCAG 2.0 AA compliance for public-sector websites by January 2015; as of the most recent reporting (2023) that legislation still had not been enacted, leaving compliance a matter of policy rather than binding law.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Not disclosed; an ongoing national government portal.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Accessibility guidelines since 2008, updated 2012/2014; WSA award in 2023.
Staffing & skills
Stafraent Island (Digital Iceland), Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs

Conditions for success

  • Accessibility guidelines assigning explicit responsibility to managers, designers and developers
  • Ongoing automated testing (Siteimprove, WAVE, aXe)

Common failure modes

  • 2012-announced WCAG 2.0 AA legislation still not enacted as of 2023
  • No independent compliance audit or accessibility-score data publicly available

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

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Attachments

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