Digital accessibility policy

Digital accessibility means that electronic documents and information can be easily used by everyone including people with disabilities.

Essex County Council is committed to ensuring its digital services (websites, mobile apps, online tools and documents) are all free of barriers that might prevent people with vision, hearing, mobility and other disabilities from using them.

Council employees are users too and we are committed to equality, diversity and inclusion as an employer.  

All internal services and systems should meet the same accessibility requirements. 

Background 

The services that we provide should be open to everyone. This means that they should be inclusive and accessible to users irrespective of their disability or impairment. 

In the UK, about 1 in 5 adults have a disability of some kind, and a third have temporary impairments like illness or an injury. This is a significant proportion of the adult population. 

When you are planning, delivering or improving your digital service, you need to think about how people with different needs might interact with it. After all, many residents don’t have a choice about the services that we provide. If digital services aren’t accessible, they have to use other channels to reach us or they are excluded. 

Accessibility is also part of the law because: 

• if your service isn’t accessible to everyone who needs it, you may be breaking the Equality Act 2010
• by September 2020, public bodies were expected to meet the Public Sector accessibility regulations which includes internal services for staff

Recommendations

The accessibility policy is intended to complement and build on existing strategies and policies.

Our organisation strategy references digital services designed around the user and digital skills in the workforce.

The key requirements for our services are that:

• every digital service that the council provides should be accessible to as many people as possible
• digital products, service and content should meet the Web Content Accessibility 2.1 Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) as a baseline and by October 2024 should meet the  meet the Web Content Accessibility 2.2 Guidelines (WCAG 2.2) - this includes our digital services built or provided by third parties or through third party products
• all procurements of digital services should include compliance with WCAG 2.1 (WCAG 2.2 by October 2024) within the requirements and as part of the contract with any third party
• content should preferably be published as HTML and not PDF unless there is a clear business reason, following GOV.UK advice
• new or changed digital services should be subject to accessibility testing, in proportion to the impact and complexity of the service - testing should ideally include testing with service users.
• all roles with responsibility for the content, development or design of digital services are expected to do basic accessibility checks
• the council should publish live accessibility statements covering all its websites - you can find advice on creating an accessibility statement in the Digital Manual
• it is the responsibility of all website owners to ensure that the site and all Essex County Council apps are covered by an accessibility statement - the statement must explain the level of accessibility across the website or app, highlight any barriers to accessibility and provide alternative ways for users to access information and contact the service

Consider accessibility at every stage 

Consider accessibility at every stage You need to think about how you are going to address accessibility at the beginning and at every stage of your work on digital services. It’s much harder to make a service accessible if it’s only addressed late on. 

There is specific guidance for the different stages of the development and delivery process in the Essex County Council Digital Manual. 

Accessibility testing 

Digital services should be subject to accessibility testing, in proportion to the impact and complexity of the service. 

Testing should include: 

• documenting that the design and procurement of services include accessibility requirements
• documenting that any new technologies or components have been fully tested
• including people with disabilities in usability testing which could mean procuring the services of a third party to complete an audit and allowing time to make changes before launch

All of the testing up to the 3rd party audit should be designed to ensure that the audit finds as little as possible. Where a third party audit is undertaken you should ask the auditor to complete an accessibility statement. You can see an example accessibility statement on essex.gov.uk.

Download this policy

The best place to read this policy is on this website. If you need a hard copy to print and share, you can download a copy of the digital accessibility policy (PDF, 113KB).