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Digital accessibility comes first at Gem

The government wants everyone to be able to take part in the digital society. That is why websites and mobile apps of government bodies must be accessible to everyone — including people with a visual, auditory, motor or cognitive impairment. This has been a legal obligation for years. But in practice it still doesn't go well everywhere, and residents are unfortunately short-changed as a result.

The same applies to a virtual assistant. A chatbot must be digitally accessible too. A conversation with the municipality must not depend on whether you can use the mouse, whether you can see well, or whether you can have the text read aloud. That is why we did not tack accessibility onto Gem afterwards, but made it a starting point from the outset.

"For our testers, digital accessibility is not a bonus, but a precondition for being able to use digital services independently."

Why this matters for your municipality

As a municipality you are legally responsible for the accessibility of your digital services. That framework is not optional: it follows from the Government Digital Accessibility Decree (Besluit Digitale Toegankelijkheid Overheid), based on the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, level AA.

A chatbot on your website simply falls under it. If you put up an inaccessible assistant, you exclude part of your residents — precisely the residents who often need digital help the most. By deploying Gem, you get a chat building block that takes accessibility seriously and that helps you meet your obligations.

Please note: an accessible chatbot does not automatically mean an accessible website. Your municipal website remains your own responsibility and must be tested and certified separately.

How we make Gem accessible: IDA

Under the hood of Gem is a pilot setup called IDA — Inclusive Digital Assistant (Inclusieve Digitale Assistent). IDA is the accessible foundation on which municipalities build their own assistant. If you use the software, you choose a name yourself that suits your organisation. With us, that assistant is called Gem.

IDA is deliberately designed with the needs of different users in mind. For instance, the chat interface has not one but three views — Small, Medium and Large — so everyone can choose a size that is comfortable to read and operate. The small view is based on the familiar view of Gem.

The technology behind IDA is being made more widely available to municipalities. Other municipalities can then see how it works, adopt components to make their own chatbot accessible, and ask for help with that. This way the whole Gem community benefits from what we develop together.

A milestone: independently certified

You don't claim accessibility, you have it tested. For that, IDA went through the full process: a self-scan, submission for an independent assessment, and processing the findings.

That didn't happen by itself. When zooming in, it was sometimes hard to keep a conversation properly in view, and when scrolling, questions and answers sometimes disappeared from sight. These and other points for improvement have been resolved. After implementing the improvements, the pilot setup was certified and IDA meets the legal minimum requirements for digital accessibility.

This makes IDA possibly the first certified chatbot in the Netherlands — a fine milestone, and a solid foundation for any municipality that wants to deploy Gem.

From certificate to human work

A certificate proves that the technology is sound. But a technically accessible chatbot is not automatically pleasant to use. That is why it does not end with the certificate.

A test panel of five people with a disability tests Gem in practice. They work with screen readers, or with voice and head control, and contribute from their own experience to an assistant that works well for all residents. They asked ordinary resident questions — about opening hours, passport applications and municipal schemes — and watched how the conversation went.

What stood out to them:

  • Gem gives a clear and calm answer.
  • Cooperation with screen readers works well: answers are read aloud logically and information remains easy to follow.
  • Asking and sending questions is simple and feels natural.
  • The most important verdict: according to the testers Gem works more pleasantly than other chatbots they knew.

Of course the experts by experience also saw points for improvement — for example a button whose name does not quite cover its function, an image that looks too bright at high contrast, and long answers that benefit from better navigation. That is exactly why we do this: we incorporate their insights step by step into a new version, one that fits even better with what people with a disability need.

What the testers appreciate most is that accessibility is taken into account early in development — not as a finishing touch, but as a starting point.

Accessibility is never finished

Digital accessibility is not a box you tick once. It is a continuous promise: certify, listen to experts by experience, improve, and test again. By choosing Gem, you join an approach in which that promise is built in — and a community that delivers on it together.