Here at Lake Solutions, we have written before about the importance of making your website accessible. While it’s something we probably all accept that we need to do, public sector bodies actually have a legal duty to make sure their websites and apps meet accessibility requirements. In this case, public sector bodies include central government and local government organisations; as well as some charities and other non-government organisations.
The Government states:
Making a website or mobile app accessible means making sure it can be used by as many people as possible. This includes those with:
* impaired vision
* motor difficulties
* cognitive impairments or learning disabilities
* deafness or impaired hearing
Accessibility means more than putting things online. It means making your content and design clear and simple enough so that most people can use it without needing to adapt it, while supporting those who do need to adapt things.
Public sector websites published on or after 23 September 2018 should have been compliant by 23 September 2019. Any websites published after this date must be compliant before going live. Public sector websites published before 23 September 2018 should have been compliant by 23 September 2020 and apps by 23 June 2021.
Primary and secondary schools or nurseries are partially exempt from the accessibility regulations - except for the content people need in order to use their services, for example a form that lets you outline school meal preferences.
Some organisations are not exempt but may not need to fully meet accessibility standards. This is the case if the impact of fully meeting the requirements is too much for an organisation to reasonably cope with. The accessibility regulations call this a ‘disproportionate burden’. This includes the burden that making those things accessible places on your organisation (such as the cost) and the benefits of making those things accessible.
Whether organisations are compliant or not is being overseen by the Government Digital Service (GDS) and we are now hearing about public sector organisations receiving a communication from the Service – which has clearly been conducting random checks on public sector sites – stating that there are issues which require fixing within a set timescale. And it’s worth noting that the entire site should be compliant – not just the web pages but any material, such as downloadable PDFs etc.
Bodies which have received a communication are required to confirm they have received the message and then have a set amount of time to sort out the issues (typically 12 weeks). We have heard that the GDS is fairly approachable though and ready to work with an organisation to help them resolve any issues, as long as the organisation makes it clear that they are making a concrete plan to fix the reported issues.
Public sector organisations are also required to publish an accessibility statement. There is a sample accessibility statement online which can be downloaded. While it can be amended to suit your organisation, some of the wording is legally required
While these requirements currently only cover public sector bodies, it is worth making your website accessible whatever business you are in. To help, there is a set of guidelines for making websites accessible known as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) which were developed by the World Wide Web Consortium.
The Consortium is the main international standards organisation for the internet and it was founded in 1994 and led by computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. As well as working together in the development of standard for the World Wide Web, it also engages in education and outreach and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.
WCAG are an internationally recognised set of recommendations for improving web accessibility. They explain how to make digital services, websites and apps accessible to everyone, including users with impairments to their vision, hearing, mobility, and thinking and understanding.
WCAG (which is currently at version 2.2, launched on 5 October 2023) has 13 guidelines, which are organised under four principles:
* Perceivable
* Operable
* Understandable
* Robust
By focusing on principles, not technology, they emphasise the need to think about the different ways people interact with content. For example, users might use a keyboard instead of a mouse, use a screen reader to ‘read’ (speak) content out loud or a screen magnifier to enlarge part or all of a screen.
Making your website accessible is something which should be considered at the very start of the process, when a company is thinking about branding and the colours it selects. We wrote about this in a previous blog.
While it is currently only the websites of public bodies which are being actively checked currently, there are examples of businesses in other territories, such as the US, being taken to court over poorly accessible websites. In any case, making your website as accessible as possible is the sensible approach.
If you need advice on making your website more accessible, then contact Lake Solutions today on tel: 020 3397 3222.