The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 became UK law in September 2018 with the aim to make online public services accessible for everyone, by 2021. Public sector websites must now be accessible and publish an accessibility statement. GOV.UK/accessibility-regulations
Although this blog site is not within the public sector, once I was made aware of the law, if felt right to understand it. For me the best way to do that is to have ago practically. I find the process of doing something rather than just reading about it, far more successful to be recanted and understood.
I first stated to see theses accessible statement appearing on websites in 2020, when I was needing to find out information about how accessible places I wanted to visit were. I became incredibly frustrated that the information I wanted was not always there, and even more confused to find lots of website having links to accessible statements with content only referring to the online presence. A floor in the title perhaps, this frustration lead me to discovering;
For a website, the accessibility statement must be —
Provided in an accessible format; and published on the website of the public sector body.
This website has an accessible feature, that allows different accessible formats by simply clicking on a button labelled Accessibility menu that appears in green on all pages. It will provide you with a number of options to change the appearance to meet your accessible needs.
I am using Userway, but other companies have similar tools, I use WordPress which is a free blog website, but in-order to add this feature, the site needs to be upgraded. I have now committed to an annual subscription to allow me to add this feature. Please use it, and give feedback as to how you find it, please do also comment and suggest on anything else I can do to make this site more accessible.
If you would like to view the site without the accessibility menu, simply click to open it scroll down and select hide.