Overview of accessibility legislation and requirements

This document is a brief overview of the legislation and requirements for public sector services. This is not legal advice and if you have any queries relating to your service and any of the legislation referenced here, you should contact your department's legal team.

Accessibility requirements for a public sector service

As of the time of writing, the following legislation and requirements must be adhered to when creating a new service.

• Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018
• Equality Act 2010
• Service Standard

If your service is currently being maintained or actively developed, it is likely that both pieces of the legislation will apply to your service even if it has been around for a while.

Complying with the legislation and the service manual will help to ensure that your service is accessible to as many people as possible.

Meet the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018

The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSAR) 2018 came into effect on 23 September 2018 and are the most recent addition to accessibility legislation in the UK.

All public sector bodies, including central government, local government and some charities, must meet the requirements within the regulations. The regulations cover the contents of websites and mobile applications developed by public sector bodies.

In order to meet the accessibility requirements, a service must:

• Meet the 50 success criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA
• Publish an Accessibility Statement documenting conformance against the WCAG

There are some pieces of content that you may not need to fix - the following items, taken from Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies, are exempt:

• pre-recorded audio and video published before 23 September 2020

• live audio and video

• heritage collections like scanned manuscripts

• PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 - unless users need them to use a service, for example a form that lets you request school meal preferences

• maps - but you’ll need to provide essential information in an accessible format like an address

• third party content that’s under someone else’s control if you did not pay for it or develop it yourself - for example, social media ‘like’ buttons

• content on intranets or extranets published before 23 September 2019 (unless you make a major revision after that date)

• archived websites if they’re not needed for services your organisation provides and they are not updated

The guidance also states that your department is legally responsible for services meeting this legislation, even if the website or application has been outsourced to a supplier.

Understand the Equality Act 2010

The Equality Act is legislation that legally protects people from discrimination.

Under the Equality Act 2010, organisations must remove barriers that prevent disabled people from accessing services. To ensure that everyone receives the same service, the Equality Act requires us to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled people can access everything they need to.

An example of a reasonable adjustment may be to: provide content in an accessible format, such as large print

It is important to find out about your users' accessibility needs as under the Equality Act your duty to make reasonable adjustments is an "anticipatory duty". The legislation contextualises this by stating:

As the duty is owed to disabled persons generally, it is an anticipatory duty which means service providers and people exercising public functions must anticipate the needs of disabled people and make appropriate reasonable adjustments.

Therefore, you must understand the needs of your users and develop your service accordingly. It is not acceptable to wait for a real user to encounter a barrier before understanding the barriers in your service.

Develop to the Service Standard

You will have to pass multiple assessments when developing a service, the assessments will check that you are meeting the GOV.UK's Service Standard.

Point 5 of the service standard is: Make sure everyone can use the service.

The Service Standard outlines this requirement by stating that you must:

Provide a service that everyone can use, including disabled people and people with other legally protected characteristics. And people who do not have access to the internet or lack the skills or confidence to use it.

In meeting this point, your service must be accessible to everyone who needs it. This is a requirement for both internal and external services, as disabled public servants also need to be able to use services.

To meet this requirement, the Service Standard states that you must:

• meet level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) as a minimum
• work on the most commonly used assistive technologies - including screen magnifiers, screen readers and speech recognition tools
• include disabled people in user research
• have an accessibility statement that explains how accessible the service is - you need to publish this when the service moves into public beta

More information around the Service Standard's definition of accessibility can be found within Making your service accessible: an introduction.