The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018
In 2018, the UK passed accessibility legislation that affected Public Sector bodies. The legislation said their websites and mobile applications needed to be made accessible. The legislation is the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations.
There were several deadlines to comply with the law.
The deadlines were:
- 23 September 2019 for websites which are created after 23 September 2018
- 23 September 2020 for websites which are created before 23 September 2018
- 23 June 2021 for mobile applications
How to meet the regulations
To be legally compliant, your website or mobile application will need to:
- meet the latest published version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
- publish a compliant accessibility statement
There is a difference between legal compliance and the Government Accessibility Requirements. If you’re working to the GOV.UK Service Standard you will need to do additional work to pass a service assessment.
The regulations explained
In 2016, the European Union’s 2016 Web Accessibility Directive came into force. The directive required EU member states to introduce their own accessibility laws. Each law required public sector bodies to make their websites and mobile applications accessible. The accessibility requirement was to meet EN 301 549. EN 301 549 is a European Standard on Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services.
The UK’s accessibility legislation is The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018. This also requires public sector body websites and mobile applications to be accessible.
Not doing so is treated as a failure to make a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act. The legislation applies to websites or mobile apps (internal or public facing) of a public sector bodies in the UK.
The 2022 Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations amendment
In 2022 The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations were amended. This was to ensure they can continue to operate once the UK has left the European Union. The main changes were about:
- accessibility monitoring and reporting and,
- the accessibility standard that you need to meet.
Accessibility monitoring and reporting
In the amendment, the Minister for the Cabinet Office no longer has to report to the European Commission every three years. Instead, the requirement is now for the Secretary of State to publish a report on the compliance of Public Sector Bodies with the accessibility requirement. You can read the 2022-2024 accessibility monitoring report on GOV.UK.
The accessibility standard
The European standard for digital accessibility (EN 301 549) was substituted for WCAG. WCAG is now the standard that a public sector body’s website or mobile application must meet. This is not a big change in practice. EN 301 549 incorporates the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines anyway. This means that the accessibility requirement for public sector websites and mobile applications is still WCAG conformance.
References to specific WCAG versions (e.g. WCAG 2.1) were also removed. Public sector websites and mobile apps now need to conform to the latest published version of WCAG.
What counts as a website?
The monitoring and reporting body for the regulations in the UK is GDS (Government Digital Service). When doing checks, GDS will consider anything using web technologies as a website.
It doesn’t matter if it’s for internal use only or if you call it a programme, a tool or a portal. If it runs in a browser and it’s using web technologies (such as HTTP), then it is considered a website.