The brief

The Department of Education Victoria engaged Portable to conduct a UX review of the Early Years Assessment and Learning Tool (EYALT). The EYALT is a research-validated digital tool that supports early childhood educators in observing and documenting children’s development. The Department recognised the need to improve the tool’s accessibility, usability, and readability ensuring it remains an effective and inclusive tool for educators and aligns with evolving best practices.

This initiative formed part of the Department’s broader commitment to continuously improve digital learning resources and support high-quality education outcomes in early childhood settings.

The challenge

Despite its importance, the EYALT faced challenges common to many systems, including limited accessibility for users with assistive needs, inconsistent usability across the interface, and dense content not optimised for diverse literacy levels. It also needed to better reflect plain English standards to support educators from a wide range of backgrounds. Improving these areas was crucial to ensure the tool empowered educators, rather than hindered their workflow.

The focus of the work was on clear, accessible information with intuitive set up.

Our approach

Portable went through four clear phases with the Department's team.

Phase 1: Planning and immersion

We aligned with stakeholders through a structured kickoff, collected relevant research and data, and submitted the necessary Research in Schools and Early Childhood Settings (RISEC) ethics application. We worked closely with the Department to ensure shared understanding of goals, expectations, and user needs.

Phase 2: Audits

We conducted detailed audits across three key areas:

Accessibility audit: Evaluated the tool against WCAG 2.2 standards using automated and manual testing to assess elements like contrast, keyboard navigation, and screen reader compatibility.
User experience (UX) audit: Identified usability challenges using heuristic analysis to recommend interface and workflow improvements.
Readability audit: Reviewed content against plain English principles, assessing sentence structure, jargon, and readability scores.

These audits are designed to evaluate how well EYALT supports its diverse users. We uncovered barriers impacting educators’ experience, and provided targeted, actionable recommendations to enhance inclusivity, streamline workflows, and align the tool with best practice standards in digital design and plain language. To learn more about how Portable conducts audits, read this article.

Phase 3: User research and testing

We collaborated with the Department to recruit and conduct interviews with 7 educators who actively use the EYALT. Using a semi-structured format, we captured real-world insights, pain points, and behavioural patterns.

Phase 4: Reporting and recommendations

Insights from the audits and interviews were synthesised into actionable recommendations. We delivered a final report and presented a playback session to highlight key opportunities for improvement and future refinement.

The impact

This project applied a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in order to achieve a balanced set of insights and recommendations.

The themes that emerged from the research will ring true to anyone who works in the education space. Teachers are pressed for time and are juggling many tasks to deliver quality education to young people. They seek out efficiencies in all processes they do, and every smoothed path and shortcut is helpful.

In the classroom context, paper-based records are still an important part of teachers’ practice, as digital devices distract from learning and are often less efficient. So, this must be kept in mind when developing digital tools and their supporting documents for educators.

Practical supporting materials that can be printed out and scribbled on are still an essential part of teachers’ toolkit. As are support and guidance on communicating with parents about their children and the observations teachers have made about them.

Overlaying our qualitative findings with a technical lens focusing on accessibility, usability and readability allowed us to provide a range of suggested updates to the tool, including quick wins that are low (design and developmental) effort, medium-term gains to be prototyped and developed, and long term opportunities to explore in more depth with further research and testing.

Our final deliverables included:

A comprehensive UX report detailing accessibility, usability, and readability improvements
Key recommendations for enhancing educator experience and supporting tool longevity
User insights grounded in real educator experiences and workflows
Recommendations to take forward to improve the product in ways that will make it more useful and usable for teachers
A foundation for future enhancements aligned with national education strategies

The Department now holds a validated, user-informed roadmap to improve the EYALT, with next steps that can be taken forward internally or in partnership with development vendors.

Reflections

This project reinforced the importance of integrating accessibility and plain language principles into government digital tools, particularly those used in educational settings.

Through structured research and collaboration, we helped advise on how the EYALT can better serve educators and, by extension, the children and families they support.

“It was excellent to have the opportunity to explore how to improve an important tool for teachers from so many different angles. Consulting with teachers was a delight and they thoughtfully, honestly, and generously shared their experiences and ideas."
– Debra Cupitt, User Experience Researcher