Directive (EU) 2016/2102 establishes common accessibility requirements in order to ensure that websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies are made more accessible by making them perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.

In order to help public sector bodies meet the accessibility requirements, the monitoring should also raise awareness and encourage learning in Member States. For that reason, and in order to enhance transparency, the overall results of the monitoring activities should be made publicly available in an accessible format.

In order to extract meaningful and comparable data, a structured presentation of the results of the monitoring activities where different clusters of public services and levels of administration are identified is necessary.

In order to facilitate the sampling of the websites and mobile applications to be monitored, Member States should be allowed to take measures to maintain up-to-date lists of the websites and mobile applications that belong to the scope of Directive (EU) 2016/2102.

In order to enhance the social impact of monitoring, a risk-based approach may be followed when selecting the sample by considering, among others, the influence of specific websites and mobile applications, the notifications received in the feedback mechanism, previous monitoring results as well as input from the enforcement body and contribution from national stakeholders.

As the technology for automated monitoring of mobile applications is foreseen to gradually improve, Member States should consider applying the simplified monitoring method, established in this Decision for websites, also to mobile applications, taking into account the effectiveness and affordability of the available tools.

The standards and technical specifications referred to in Article 6 of Directive (EU) 2016/2102 should form the basis of the methodology for monitoring.

In order to promote innovation, to avoid imposing barriers on the market and to ensure that the monitoring methodology is technology neutral, it should not define the specific tests to be applied for measuring the accessibility of websites and mobile applications. Instead, the monitoring methodology should be limited to establishing the requirements for the methods to verify compliance and to detect non-compliance with the accessibility requirements provided for in Article 4 of Directive (EU) 2016/2102.

If the provisions included in the legislation of the Member State exceed the requirements in the standards and technical specifications referred to in Article 6 of Directive (EU) 2016/2102, in order to enhance comparability of the monitoring, Member States should monitor and report in a way that provides distinguishable results regarding the compliance with the requirements in the standards and technical specifications referred to in Article 6 of Directive (EU) 2016/2102.

Comparability of the monitoring results should be ensured through the use of the monitoring methodology and reporting laid down in this Decision. In order to foster the sharing of best practices and to promote transparency, Member States should make public how they monitor, as well as make publicly available a mapping, in the form of a correlation table, demonstrating how the monitoring and the tests applied cover the requirements referred to in the standards and technical specifications provided for in Article 6 of Directive (EU) 2016/2102.

If Member States use the possibility provided for in Article 1(5) to exclude websites or mobile applications of schools, kindergartens or nurseries from the application of the Directive, they should use the relevant parts of the monitoring methodology to monitor the accessibility of the content of such websites and mobile applications, relating to essential online administrative functions.

The measures provided for in this Decision are in accordance with the opinion of the committee established by Article 11(1) of Directive (EU) 2016/2102,