Housing Services Annual Report 2023-24 flipbook - Disproportionate burden assessments for digital accessibility

Accessibility legislation (on legislation.gov.uk website) 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 the  Housing Services Annual Report 2023-24 which is available as an online flipbook.

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

• a fully accessible version for all users to access

Making the Annual Report 2023-24 fully accessible would require significant dedicated effort.External specialists would need to be engaged. A reasonable estimate for full accessibility compliance is around 20 to 40 hours of work or approximately £5,000 if outsourced. This report is produced on an annual basis, so it would take a disproportionate amount of a content designer's time to create a new HTML version of this document each year.

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
• Requests for additionally accessible versions are rare
• The document does meet accessibility requirements for a large number of users, although some groups will find it disproportionately difficult
• We have and will always assist with accessible versions on request

Making the Annual Report 2023-24 fully accessible would require dedicated effort. An external specialist would need to be engaged. A reasonable estimate for full accessibility compliance is around 20 to 40 hours of work or approximately £5,000 if outsourced. This report is produced annually, so it would consume a disproportionate amount of a content designer's time to create a new HTML version of this document each year.

While most of the text content can be made accessible with relative ease, certain elements of the document, such as  tables, charts, and images, may pose significant challenges. These visual components often require alternative text descriptions, which can be time-consuming to create and may not fully capture the intended meaning.

We are legally required to make the document available to the public, so it will be published on the Council’s website.

While requests for accessible versions are rare, we are committed to assisting with accessible versions on request.

Our involved tenants, leaseholders, and shared owners chose this format for the annual report as it is familiar and used for the magazine Tenants in Touch. They also voted to include podcasts and videos.

To recreate this publication would cost resource and budget. However, we have taken the following steps:

• Provide alternative formats upon request (e.g., large print, braille, audio)
• Supply accessible versions through tenantinvolvement@oxford.gov.uk
• Consider upgrading the document format in future editions to enhance accessibility

Alternative formats can be supplied if required - requests should be sent to tenantinvolvement@oxford.gov.uk.

24 February 2025