For many governments in Europe, the date September 23rd in 2020 marked the entry into force of new accessibility legislation for websites. And the deadline for public sector bodies to improve the accessibility of their websites and to produce and publish accessibility statements.
But the date also marks the beginning of a new view on digital accessibility. Before September 23rd, it was seemingly simple: there was a standard for accessibility and the obligation was to meet the standard. How complicated can that be?
In reality, applying the standard turned out to be quite complicated. And disappointing. In order to claim conformance, the accessibility standard requires that all success criteria must be fully met. Many public sector bodies struggled to fully meet this requirement, in the Netherlands and in other countries [1]. As a consequence, websites that met almost all success criteria had to be labeled as 'not conforming'. But it didn't stop there. In the Netherlands, websites with this label were often dismissed as 'inaccessible' by uncompromising accessibility advocates and in the media. Branding each website that is not fully accessible as inaccessible is undeserved. Because even when it is not 100%, the accessibility level of a website may be high enough to be used without problem by most persons with disabilities. But - and this is very important - not by all of them, since accessibility is not guaranteed until all accessibility criteria are fully met.
Before September 23rd, many accessibility improvements went unnoticed due to the black and white approach. That was far from stimulating. It resulted in people responsible for websites becoming demotivated, and convinced that meeting the accessibility standard sounds great in theory, but is not a realistic goal in practice. Or they stopped with accessibility altogether, because now matter how hard they tried, it was never good enough.
Policymakers also faced disappointment: the effectiveness of their accessibility policy fell far short of the expectations. Relatively few websites turned out to be demonstrably accessible. For such an important social goal this was an important setback, because everyone should have unhindered access to the digital space.
The black and white approach officially came to an end on September 23rd 2020, although not everyone was aware of this yet [2]. With the entry into force of the decree on digital accessibility which applies to all government websites, the coupling between the standard and the obligation has fundamentally changed. From now on not only the websites are to be reviewed, but also the 'necessary measures' taken by the responsible public sector bodies in order to ensure the accessibility of the website.
In the European Web Accessibility Directive [3], on which the Dutch decree is based, the new obligation is articulated as follows: Member States shall ensure that public sector bodies take the necessary measures to make their websites and mobile applications more accessible by making them perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.
The formulation has created room foor public sector bodies to work step-by-step and systematically towards improving accessibility. This appears to have a positive effect. Moreover, the phrase 'more accessible' automatically puts emphasis on the results that are achieved by the public sector body. At the same time it does not result in an overly positive story, because the accessibility issues that need improvement have to be clearly described in the accessibility statement.
Until it can be proven that all requirements are fully met, improvement measures must be taken. Do you have no idea how accessible your website really is? A suitable 'necessary measure' is to evaluate the website's accessibility, or have it carried out for you. No budget available for evaluating and improving accessibility? The 'necessary measure' is to claim a multi-annual budget, to cover the cost of complying with the legal obligation. Is the involvement of the organization's management insufficient? Develop a policy plan on digital accessibility and set concrete and feasible goals. Do the members of the web team have insufficient knowledge of accessibility? Train them. Does the evaluation reveal that not all requirements were met? Describe the cause of each deviation, the effect it has on persons with disabilities, determine which 'necessary measures' must be taken to repair the deviation and carefully plan when the improvement will be implemented.
The above is just a short summary of the possible 'necessary measures'.
All measures are to be included in the accessibility statement. Publishing this self-declaration in an accessibility statement is part of the legal obligation. The statements provide a much more detailed insight in the state of accessibility of a website than was ever possible under the now obsolete obligation.
Accessibility statements must conform to a prescribed model. This model is implemented in an online tool that simplifies the preparation of valid accessibility statements: the accessibility statement assistant (in Dutch) [4].
Depending on the progress, four so-called compliance statuses are possible: A = fully compliant , B = partially compliant , C = first measures taken and D = not compliant.
With status A, the ultimate goal has been achieved, with B an organization is in control regarding web accessibility, with C accessibility gets attention and the first measures are taken, and with D this is not yet the case, only the obligation to publish an accessibility statement is met. In the Netherlands, the statuses A and B must be supported by evidence in the form of an accessibility evaluation that is carried out according to W3C's Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM).
When status A is reached, public sector bodies must continue taking 'necessary measures' to maintain the status. The other statuses are mere steps on the way to A and are temporary by definition.
Accessibility statements stat are publicly available and standardized have a crucial benefit. They enable everyone to contribute towards solving the web accessibility challenge, including the target groups for digital accessibility. Since the statements are public, everyone can get a good understanding of the accessibility phase of a website. And then use it for the better [5].
Accessibility statements are intended to make the threshold as low as possible for actors in a supervisory role. In the case of a municipal website, these are the members of the municipal council. The council has a supervisory mandate. A council member can be supported by local accessibility advocates. Also available is formal inter-administrative supervision (interbestuurlijk toezicht, IBT). This is regulated by the coming Dutch Digital government act (Wet digitale overheid, Wdo), which is expected to come into force in 2022.
Finally, the European Web Accessibility Directive prescribes that accessibility statements must contain a feedback mechanism. Anyone who encounters an accessibility problem can report it to the responsible public sector body. The public sector body must inform the reporting person about the progress and outcome of the problem that was reported. If the reporting person is not satisfied with the response, or does not receive it on time, a complaint can be filed. And if the complaint is not handled on time or not satisfactorily, a complaint can be submitted to the ombudsman.
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Raph de Rooij, September 14, 2020 (English version: October 15, 2020; last update August 26, 2021)