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What this means is that PHE must offer an accessible option when publishing content, or we are breaking the law and breaching government and GDS guidelines. What used to be advisory, has now become compulsory. This is particularly the case for public sector bodies, so Public Health England is under scrutiny to ensure that we are compliant.
Web Content Accessibility (WCAG 2.1)
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guidelines
The GDS guidelines are themselves based on the internationally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1). Key principles include:
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If we don't make the web pages and the documents we publish accessible, we are breaking the law.
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Why accessible web content is better for users
Even if it hadn't become law, all research suggests that in the long run users prefer to use accessible websites. This applies to all users, not just people with disabilities. Accessible websites and documents are:
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1. The benchmark for web accessibility is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. They provide detailed guidelines and an at-a-glance overview, among a host of other resources.
2. The World Wide Web Consortium - the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web - hosts the Web Accessibility Initiative.Alongside Alongside explanations of all the main aspects of accessibility, the site hosts a set of videos showing how people with various disabilities or requirements use the web - Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore the Impact and Benefits for Everyone.
3. The Government Digital Service has published copious content about accessibility. A good place to start is the Accessibility Campaign landing page.
4. WebAIM is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to furthering knowledge, technical skills and tools to improve web accessibility. One of these is its WAVE or Web Accessibility Evaluation tool. Paste any URL into the field at the top to get an automatic assessment of a web page's accessibility. (NB automated accessibility testers like this are generally thought to pick up only 20-30% of accessibility issues on a web page – the rest must be done by human checking.)
5. GDS guidance and blogs refer to the set of guidelines drawn up by Worcester County Council for applying accessibility in a public sector context. These are known as SCULPT (short for Structure, Colour and contrast, Use of images, Links, Plain English and Table structure). There is a useful video describing how the digital team developed the SCULPT guidelines.