Evaluating the Accessibility of Local Authority Public Facing websites in England

Digital accessibility is essential to providing all users with equitable access to websites and the services they provide. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the state of accessibility of Local Authority Public Facing websites in England following the introduction of the United Kingdom Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSBAR) which came into force on 23rd September 2020. An heuristic evaluation was carried out using a subset of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 during the first half of 2023. Our data was collected by type of council, namely: Metropolitan District, Unitary Authority, London Borough, District and County. A sample size of 57 websites was selected, with 3 pages being tested on each website. Our results from the data show that councils are not fully complying with legislation; however, the number of issues found on each council website was low. The sample councils’ websites are compliant with roughly 86% of the test points included in our research, thus are meeting the guidelines to some extent. A secondary aim was to explore whether there were any correlations between the number of failures and levels of social deprivation and disability within each council area. Implications for practice and recommendations are shared.