EdLaw
UK — Equality Act 2010 (accessibility via reasonable adjustments)
The UK's accessibility law is not a technical standard but the anticipatory duty to make reasonable adjustments — the reason schools ask vendors for accessible products.
Applicability to EdTech
- The duty's three requirements (section 20): change provisions/criteria/practices, remove or alter physical features, and — the one that reaches us — provide auxiliary aids and services, expressly including information in an accessible format (s 20(6)). For schools the duty is anticipatory: they must plan for disabled pupils in general, so they procure against accessibility expectations rather than reacting per-pupil.
- Schools (section 85): discrimination is prohibited in admissions and "in the way it provides education" — a digital lesson a disabled pupil cannot use is squarely a s 85 problem for the school, and by procurement flow-down a problem for us; the reasonable-adjustments duty applies to schools via s 85(6) and Schedule 13.
- Services (section 29): our direct-to-consumer surfaces owe the duty in their own right.
- Practical bar: WCAG conformance (as in PSBAR and EN 301 549) is the accepted evidence of adjustment for digital products, though the Act itself never names a standard.
Contents
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| REASONABLE-ADJUSTMENTS.md | sections 20, 29, 85 |
Enforcement
Private claims (county court / tribunals for schools); EHRC enforcement powers. No fixed fines — remedies are damages and declarations.
Related
- Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 — the technical-standard layer for public-sector websites/apps
- EU Web Accessibility Directive, US §504/§508 — siblings
Sources
Meta
Section text is reproduced verbatim from the consolidated Act on legislation.gov.uk via the shared CLML converter by tools/legislation-gov-uk/build_equality2010.py; verify re-checks every source text node.