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IT Services Knowledge Base

Accessibility Regulations 2018 Guidance

This guide will go through the Accessibility Regulations 2018 policy and the procedure to comply with it's legal requirements.

In September 2018, the UK passed new regulations to ensure digital assets in the public sector meet high standards of accessibility. This is called the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This means we need to make our content and services clear and easy to use and understand. People should be able to use them without the need for adaptive technologies where possible - and they should work with those technologies when they are required/preferred by our users.

It is now a legal requirement that our digital content is accessible by the following dates:

  • 23 September 2019 – new content on internal sites, including intranets (being those published on or after 23 September 2018)
  • 23 September 2019 – new public sector body websites and content (being those published on or after 23 September 2018)
  • 23 September 2020 – existing public sector body websites (those published before 23 September 2018)
  • 23 June 2021 – public sector body mobile apps

Failure to meet these officially mandated timeframes could result in severe penalties for the University.

Please see the following guidance on how you can make your content accessible.

 

General guidance

 

Accessibility checkers

 

Website content

Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)

Accessibility Builder