The Government Digital Service marks the ninth annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day with a series of expert-led webinars and resources
Today, Thursday 20 May, the Government Digital Service (GDS) marks the ninth annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day with a series of expert-led webinars and resources for public-sector organisations.
The resources and webinars will run throughout the day and provide additional guidance on improving the accessibility of online public services.
This activity comes just over four months before the compliance date for public-sector websites to meet online accessibility regulations.
By 23 September 2020, all public-sector organisations must align their websites with a set of accessibility criteria and publish a statement outlining how accessible they are.
The criteria includes alternative text to improve the accessibility of images, captions and audio descriptions for video content, and minimum colour contrast ratios for web pages and visual design.
As leaders in this space, GDS are monitoring and reporting on the accessibility of public-sector websites and mobile applications, and enforcing the requirement to publish an accessibility statement on behalf of the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
Minister of State for the Cabinet Office, Lord Agnew, said:
Kristina Barrick, Head of Scope’s Big Hack at disability equality charity Scope, said:
The recorded webinars will be published to the GDS YouTube channel after the event. Further guidance on this issue is available on the GOV.UK service manual and at GOV.UK/accessibility-regulations.