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Government Digital Service guidelines
GDS has published detailed guidance on a detailed summary of the legislation and its implications for public sector bodies - Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies.
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.
The Four Principles of Accessibility
All our digital content must be:
Perceivable - Users must be able to perceive the information being presented (it can't be invisible to all of their senses)
Operable - Users must be able to operate the interface (the interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform)
Understandable - Users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface (the content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding)
Robust - Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies; users must be able to access the content as technologies advance (as technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible)
The acronym for these four principles is POUR, which is often used as a handy mnemonic for remembering the 4 keys areas of accessibility.
Web Content Accessibility (WCAG 2.1) guidelines
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