What accessible content is

Digital accessibility is a part of several laws and standards we must follow. These laws consider people's needs when designing and delivering digital services. 

They include the:

• Public Sector Equality Duty (GOV.UK)
• Equality Act 2010 (GOV.UK)
• Public Sector Bodies Websites and Mobile Applications Accessibility Regulations 2018 (GOV.UK)

All public sector websites and apps must meet these regulations, even if they've been outsourced to an external supplier.

This includes public facing websites and websites used only by staff, like our Intranet or SharePoint sites. 

To meet these requirements, we are responsible for:

• any content we create or commission and how it's published  
• how we design technical components of our websites to work with service content  

This means we must make sure content is: 

• navigable, readable and understandable
• published using content creation software correctly, so it works with different devices and software, like web browsers 

To help us do this, we must follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Accessibility monitoring and enforcement

Government Digital Service (GDS) and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) regularly monitor and enforce website accessibility for public sector bodies.

Public sector website and mobile application accessibility monitoring (GOV.UK)

Compliance does not mean works for everyone

There's a difference between being legally compliant and having a service which works for people. 

Legal compliance is the bare minimum, but does not guarantee our service will work for all our users.

There may be other things we need to do, like:

• understand users and their needs
• solve a whole problem for our users
• make the service simple to use
• provide a joined up experience across all channels
• choose the right tools and technology
• make sure everyone can use the service by testing it
• review content and improve frequently