Five years on – Digital accessibility in the UK

Background

In September 2018, new legislation was enacted that required every public sector body in the UK to ensure their digital content and systems met accessibility standards. There were two key differences between this legislation and existing disability related legislation:

1.?????It objectively defined the accessibility requirement. This was a game changer; no more fuzzy intentions of “best efforts” or pushing responsibility onto the users with a lazy “If you experience problems with this site let us know… (because we haven’t a clue whether it works or not…).

2.?????it defined a failure to “meet the accessibility requirement” as a failure to “make a reasonable adjustment”.

Now accessibility compliance can now be measured, easily and objectively. And any failures in compliance can be traced directly to a failure to make a reasonable adjustment. Sure, there are some caveats, exemptions or legitimate consideration of “disproportionate burden” but the basics of good digital practice are neither difficult to understand or time consuming to achieve.

So, has practice changed? If not, why not and what can be done about it?

The survey

To get some answers, I created a short reflective survey with opportunities to self-assess the following:

• How well digital accessibility obligations are being met,
• Short questions on training, auditing and policy/leadership,
• Free text responses on the most positive intervention, anything that failed or backfired and any one piece of advice for other organisations.

Collecting survey responses is always a balancing act. A short, anonymous survey gets more responses but the reliability suffers – we don’t know about the institutions, or the roles, represented. But maybe we don’t need to – we’re building a picture of staff perceptions. Even if there’s noise in the data, a good response rate should help separate the signal from the noise.

The overall results

To date (June 2023) there were 88 responses in total (see survey results). The detailed results and key stories are summarised in an online resource.

To make it easier for busy people, here are the direct links to different sections. Please note that the links open in a new window.

• 5 years on - a summary of how the sector is doing in terms of increased awareness and changed practice.
• What makes the difference? Some interventions seem to be more significant than others. This section explores the findings from the organisations making most progress.
• Profiles, problems,?predictions - What had the most positive impact? Were there any noticeable flops or failures? And can you predict an organisation's progress by the interventions they choose to make (or not make)?
• One piece of advice - what was the main advice respondents gave and did it vary according to whether you were succeeding in making progress or still struggling?

I hope this proves useful, especially for those of you trying to get the attention of busy managers in under-resourced institutions.