Go back

Accessibility

We have a legal and moral responsibility to make our services, websites, documents and digital products accessible.

Accessibility is not just about meeting standards. It’s about making sure everyone can use our services without barriers.

Think about accessibility from the start

In the UK, around 1 in 4 people have a disability, including:

  • visual
  • hearing
  • motor (affecting movement)
  • cognitive (affecting memory or understanding)

Accessibility is for everyone, not just people with permanent disabilities or conditions. Temporary or situational circumstances can affect anyone’s ability to use a service. Your access needs might change depending on your:

  • location – for example, if you’re in a noisy environment or you have poor internet connection
  • health – for example, if you’re ill, tired or have a temporary injury
  • equipment – for example, if you’re using a mobile device or an older browser

Accessibility should be considered from the start when delivering a service, including during discovery, design, procurement and development. Before starting work, teams should consider how disabled people and people with access needs might access and use the service.

Read more about making your service accessible

Thinking about accessibility before you start designing your service will help you:

  • make sure that nobody is excluded
  • identify problems early, when they are quicker and cheaper to fix

Our users

Our users have a wide range of needs and use different devices and assistive technologies.

Not all access needs are visible.

You should carry out user research to understand how people use your service and where barriers exist.

You can estimate the number of people with a disability or condition that might impact how they use your service.

Accessibility law

Accessibility is required by law.

All NHSBSA services must be accessible to meet our legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty.

Any service that runs in a browser needs to meet the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 (PSBAR).

Meeting accessibility standards

Our legal responsibility to meet accessibility requirements applies to both public-facing and internal services.

All services must:

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

WCAG is a set of success criteria used to assess accessibility. The current version is WCAG 2.2.

Your service must meet Level AA.

The criteria are grouped into four principles:

  • Perceivable – content is available in different formats so users can make sense of it in a way that’s accessible to them. For example, text alternatives for images or captions on videos.
  • Operable – users can interact with the service in different ways. For example, using a keyboard instead of a mouse.
  • Understandable – content is clear and easy to follow
  • Robust – content works on different devices and with assistive technology

You can use these resources to find out more about WCAG:

Accessibility statements

You must publish an accessibility statement for your service.

The statement must explain:

  • how accessible the service is
  • any known accessibility issues
  • how users can request accessibility information in a different format
  • how users can report a problem with the service

The accessibility statement must also include a compliance status based on how many WCAG A and AA criteria are met:

  • fully compliant – meets all A and AA success criteria
  • partially compliant – one or more, but less than half, of WCAG Level A and AA success criteria have not been met
  • not compliant – more than half of all WCAG Level A and AA success criteria have not been met

Government Digital Service (GDS) assessments

Our digital services are also assessed against the GDS Service Standard. To meet all the points in the Standard, you need to evidence that accessibility is part of how you’ve designed and built your service, not an afterthought.

This means you should:

Our expectations of suppliers

When we build or buy digital products, suppliers must:

  • meet WCAG 2.2 level AA as a minimum
  • provide evidence of accessibility testing
  • publish an accessibility statement
  • provide a clear, time-bound roadmap to fix accessibility issues

Accessibility must be considered across the whole user journey, including:

  • content
  • documents
  • outputs generated by the system

You must design, develop and test for accessibility before releasing any updates to the service.

If the product includes authoring tools, suppliers must support the creation of accessible content.

Accessibility overlays

Some companies offer ‘accessibility overlays’ or ‘widgets’ that they claim fix accessibility issues.

We do not accept overlays as a solution as these tools do not make a service compliant with accessibility laws. They:

  • often introduce new accessibility barriers
  • do not fix underlying problems

Accessibility must be built into the service throughout design and development, not added afterwards.

Get further support

If you need further help, support or advice, you can contact the digital accessibility team accessibility@nhsbsa.nhs.uk

Acknowledgements

Parts of this page are adapted from guidance published by:

Related accessibility articles

Improve the playbook

If you spot anything factually incorrect with this page or have ideas for improvement, please share your suggestions.

Before you start, you will need a GitHub account. Github is an open forum where we collect feedback.

Suggest a change to this page

Published: