EdLaw
UK — PSBAR 2018 (public-sector web and app accessibility)
The UK's retained transposition of the EU Web Accessibility Directive: public-sector websites and mobile apps must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust, with a published accessibility statement.
Applicability to EdTech
- Who is bound: public sector bodies (regulation 3), with a partial carve-out for schools and nurseries — exempt except for content relating to essential online administrative functions (regulation 4(1)(c)). The portal a parent must use to pay for lunches or book parents' evening is in scope.
- The requirement (regulation 4): POUR conformance, presumed via the harmonised standard (EN 301 549 → WCAG); disproportionate burden is the assessed escape valve (regulation 6); an accessibility statement is mandatory (regulation 7); monitoring/enforcement per regulation 8.
- Vendor consequence: our platform is not itself a public-sector body, but a school using it for essential administrative functions inherits the duty — so UK tenders ask for WCAG conformance and statement inputs. The private-sector analogue arrives via the European Accessibility Act for EU-market surfaces.
Contents
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| ACCESSIBILITY-REQUIREMENT.md | regulations 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 |
Enforcement
Government Digital Service monitoring; EHRC (and ECNI) enforcement via the Equality Act 2010 reasonable-adjustments route.
Related
- Equality Act 2010 — the enforcement substrate
- EU Web Accessibility Directive — the origin instrument
Sources
Meta
Regulation text is reproduced verbatim from the consolidated instrument on legislation.gov.uk via the shared CLML converter by tools/legislation-gov-uk/build_psbar.py; verify re-checks every source text node.