Domestic Homicide Review - Stephanie - Disproportionate burden assessments for digital accessibility

Accessibility legislation states that public sector websites must publish content in an accessible format, unless doing so would impose a disproportionate burden on the organisation. If that is the case, an assessment of the extent to which compliance with the accessibility requirement imposes a disproportionate burden must be carried out.

This is a Disproportionate Burden Assessment for:

• Domestic Homicide Review Executive Summary - Stephanie
• Domestic Homicide Review Full Report - Stephanie

Download the Domestic Homicide Review - Stephanie documents.

The benefits of creating an HTML version of this PDF would be:

• a fully accessible version for all users to access
• an easily searchable and indexable version

The burdens to Oxford City Council of making the document accessible are:

• the estimate time to make the necessary changes
• the cost of making the necessary changes
• due to the sensitivity of the document, it would require the original author to make the changes
• the document would have to be in a format which does not allow for any further changes

Also relevant to this decision are that:

• We are legally required to make the document available to the public, so the document must be published on the Council’s website
• The document was put into a PDF format by the third-party author then sent to the Home Office for quality assurance
• Document views are likely to be low - most views tend to come from domestic abuse specialists however they can also use the Home Office repository to view it
• Requests for additionally accessible versions are rare - there have been no requests related to other similar domestic homicide review documents on the external website
• The document does meet accessibility requirements for a large number of users, although some groups will find it disproportionately difficult
• The document is from a third-party source or organisation
• We have and will always assist with accessible versions on request

The whole of the document will need to be made changed to make it accessible.

The time it would take to make the document accessible is approximately 5 working days. This length of time is disproportionate to the demand.

The document, due to the sensitivity of the information, will have to be changed by the report author who is an independent consultant and does not have the skills to make the document accessible. 

The cost of changing the document will be in excess of £2,500. 

If a request is made to have the document in an accessible format, we will be able to offer them a copy of the Executive Summary, which is much shorter and therefore quicker to amend. 

2 December 2024