Investigate when hidden 'Support Links' heading in footer is helpful

[36degrees]

What

The footer has a hidden 'Support Links' h2 in the footer:

govuk-frontend/src/govuk/components/footer/template.njk

Line 35 in ce2a717

<h2 class="govuk-visually-hidden">{{ params.meta.visuallyHiddenTitle | default("Support links") }}</h2>

This was flagged in another departments audit as potentially confusing:

This does not provide a clear description of what this heading relates to for a blind JAWS user in that the heading does not clearly describe its content and purpose.

We should better understand in what situations this heading is useful (or not), and whether there's a better default heading that we could use.

(The heading can be overridden by setting params.meta.visuallyHiddenTitle, but it cannot be removed)

Why

We want to ensure that the footer is as accessible as we can make it.

[36degrees]

For context, this visually hidden heading has been used in the footer by GOV.UK for nearly 7 years:
alphagov/static@7f25893#diff-b4d7e61bb39919f8fd4ae08f04918a59R3

I think the heading probably does make sense in the context of GOV.UK, where the additional links in the footer immediately follow other lists of links with their own headings – without it, a screen reader could interpret is as a continuation of the previous list.

However, my initial reaction is that it might not be necessary when the 'meta' links are the only links in the footer (which will be the case in a number of services)?

[StephenGill]

That sounds right to me - I guess that for most GOV.UK services, the list of support links will follow the 'Continue' button rather than another list of links?

That said, this seems like a good example of the subtle differences in optimising the design system for GOV.UK transactional services vs optimising it for creating static websites.

[hannalaakso]

We should also make it possible to localise the text as per this comment.

[joelanman]

I was just auditing the Prototype Kit site and came across this - 'Support links' doesn't really describe whats in the footer, and as it was hidden, I didn't even realise there was a heading there to check. Maybe the heading could be opt in, or flagged as something to check when getting started?