Six tips for writing a good accessibility statement

01 Apr 2020 | Accessibility

Adam Turner
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If you’re committed to accessibility on your website, then having an accessibility statement is important. This is a page on your website that sets out various details about the accessibility standards applied to your website, how you improve accessibility and other salient points.

Having a page shows your commitment to accessibility, sends the right message to internal stakeholders and external third parties such as regulators and it also provides important practical information to those with issues, such as areas of the site which might not be fully accessible and whom to contact if there are any questions.

There is no perfect accessibility statement but here are six tips to help you get one.  

1. Spend time on getting it right

Your accessibility statement is important; it is worth spending time on getting it right. Although some of your stakeholders may perhaps consider it as an obligation that you will need to include on your site, it should not simply be regarded as a “tick the box” exercise. Don’t regard it as a piece of dull text that nobody will ever read.

It is an opportunity to state your organisation’s commitments to improving accessibility and may be visited and viewed by those with accessibility issues or regulators. It can also be an important tool to help galvanise action from stakeholders who can see the need to implement and abide by the commitments made in an external-facing statement about accessibility.

2. Use tools and templates to get a head start

There are a number of model accessibility statements out there that can give you a head start on producing a comprehensive statement and give guidance on what to include. If you are based in the UK and particularly if you are a public sector company, the Government Digital Service (GDS) has a very good sample accessibility statement that several of our clients have used as a template. If you’re based outside the UK this can still provide value in helping you decide what to include in your statement.

The GDS sample is partly based on an EU model accessibility statement that can also be downloaded. Note that the statement is in the “Annex” download.

Another useful resource is the Web Accessibility Initiative’s (WAI) information on “Developing an accessibility statement” that also includes a free generator tool. This has fields you can complete to generate a statement that is again a good starting point to then tweak and publish.

3. Detail your efforts in keeping your website accessible

Both the GDS model accessibility statement and the WAI generator include a number of different sections covering basic information, technical details, areas of the site that are not compliant, contact details and more.  Both also suggest covering your actions and efforts, including testing, to ensure that the website is accessible.

We think this is particularly important as it demonstrates your intent and commitment to accessibility more than in any other part of your statement. One of our clients, NHS Digital, produced a detailed accessibility statement which contains the following about testing:

“This website undergoes automated testing against the W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 using the automated Sitemorse tool weekly. This tool scans 100% of our web pages, and tests against all the criteria in the guidelines which are possible to automate.

The weekly report is reviewed by the website development team, with any actions taken and prioritised into our future work. We aim to fix all high priority issues with one week of them being identified.

In addition, we conduct internal testing against known accessibility issues which are not able to be found through automated testing, on a sampled basis. We last conducted an accessibility check on these areas in June 2019.“ 

4. Don’t state that you are compliant

In your statement it is important not to state that you are compliant with the AA level of compliance with the WCAG 2.1 guidelines because this may not be strictly true at any one point in time. It only takes one piece of content where somebody has missed the alt text on an image or some errant code to render this statement inaccurate. Instead, you should be outlining the actions you take to reach compliance. Even though it may be that you are compliant the vast majority of the time, it’s also important to be factually accurate in your accessibility statement.

5. Keep it up to date

It’s important to regularly keep your accessibility statement up to date. Although the details are unlikely to change often you may need to update contact details, for example.  An accessibility statement that has obviously lapsed or hasn’t been reviewed for years suggests a “token” effort towards accessibility. It’s worth diarising a reminder review of your accessibility statement perhaps every three or six months to make sure it is still accurate. You should also update it to show when it was last reviewed to give confidence to visitors that it is accurate, acted upon and taken seriously. 

6. Make it findable

An accessibility statement is no good if it can’t be found. Generally, most organisations put it in their website footer along with items such as the Terms & Conditions and the Cookie Policy.  It may also be possible to link to it from other parts of your navigation.

Good luck with your accessibility statement

An accessibility statement is worth doing properly and can be a very useful source of information. It also sends messages about how seriously you take improving accessibility. We hope you found these tips useful!