The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018

Application

4.—(1) These Regulations apply to a website or mobile application of a public sector body, except a website or mobile application of—

(a) public service broadcasters and their subsidiaries, and of other bodies or their subsidiaries fulfilling a public service broadcasting remit;

(b) non-governmental organisations, unless they provide services that—

(i) are essential to the public; or

(ii) specifically address the needs of, or are meant for, persons with disabilities; and

(c) schools or nurseries, except for the content of their websites or mobile applications relating to essential online administrative functions.

(2) These Regulations do not apply to the following content of a website or mobile application of a public sector body—

(a) office file formats published before 23rd September 2018, unless such content is needed for active administrative processes relating to the tasks performed by the public sector body;

(b) pre-recorded time-based media published before 23rd September 2020;

(c) live time-based media;

(d) online maps and mapping services, as long as essential information is provided in an accessible digital manner for maps intended for navigational use;

(e) third-party content that is neither funded nor developed by, nor under the control of, the public sector body;

(f) reproductions of items in heritage collections that cannot be made fully accessible because of either—

(i) the incompatibility of the accessibility requirement with either the preservation of the item concerned or the authenticity of the reproduction; or

(ii) the unavailability of automated and cost-efficient solutions that would easily extract the text of manuscripts or other items in heritage collections and transform it into content compatible with the accessibility requirement;

(g) content of extranets and intranets published before 23rd September 2019, until such websites undergo a substantial revision; and

(h) content of websites and mobile applications qualifying as archives.

(3) In this regulation—

(a) “archives” means a website or mobile application which—

(i) only contains content that is not needed for active administrative processes; and

(ii) is not updated or edited after 23rd September 2019;

(b) “extranets and intranets” means a website that is only available for a closed group of people and not to the general public;

(c) “items in heritage collections” means privately or publicly owned goods presenting an historical, artistic, archaeological, aesthetic, scientific or technical interest and that are part of collections preserved by cultural institutions such as libraries, archives and museums; and

(d) “office file formats” means a document in a format that is not intended primarily for use on the web and that is included in web pages, such as Adobe Portable Document Format, Microsoft Office documents or their open-source equivalents.