MeAC – Measuring Progress of eAccessibility in Europe

Legislation/regulations

The UK Public Contracts Regulations 2006 are intended to implement the EU Directives by regulating procurement procedures for most public authorities in the UK. Article 9(3) regarding technical specifications states that a contracting authority “shall, wherever possible, take into account accessibility for disabled persons or the suitability for design for all users.”

Public authorities that are subject to the Disability Equality Duty under the DDA 2005 are required to include disability considerations in the process of procuring or commissioning a service. This duty requires public authorities to be proactive in ensuring that disabled people are treated equally in terms of access to services. The Code of Practice explicitly sets out the terms public authorities are required to include in external contracts to ensure the inclusion of disability considerations. The DED applies to all types of services and the Code of Practice for government departments gives examples of the procurement of new IT systems and the re-design of a department’s website by external contractors as services to which the procurement policy applies under the DED. There is an explicit reference to the need to ensure that websites are fully accessible to disabled people.

Guidance on the new Disability Equality duty has been published. It states that: “where disability equality is relevant a public authority will be expected to build it into the specification not only to comply with their duty under the DDA but also under the EU Directive and associated UK Regulations.”

The Publicly Available Specification (PAS 78, 2006) is an information document on procuring accessible websites. The Guide was commissioned by the Disability Rights Commission in collaboration with the British Standards Institute and in consultation with organizations in the charitable and private sector.

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) guidance ‘Social Issues in Purchasing’ indicates that, whenever public authorities purchase goods that may be used by disabled people then this should be appropriately reflected in the specification. For example, it will generally be advisable for public authorities to assume that their employees and potential users of equipment are likely to include people with a range of disabilities, and so the specification should state that the goods to be supplied should be usable by disabled people. This could include, among other things, IT equipment and software.

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