A community-led resource

Members of the accessibility community MS Team have developed a crowdsourcing approach to collating third party statements to help everyone meet the requirements of the The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Under the regulations, public sector organisations need to produce accessibility statements for digital content, this includes details for paid-for third party products and platforms.

Sharing the load

By crowdsourcing a list of products and platforms being used, the community aims to create a central repository of accessibility statements towards which everyone can signpost.

This project will also hopefully encourage suppliers to further and higher education to create compliant statements in a consistent and standardised way and improve the overall accessibility of platforms. It should also form a useful comparative list for those involved in procurement.

What do we mean by platform?

In this context, we mean platforms used in the public sector. So, if you are a public sector body and you pay for a service or platform please add it to the list. The following is a list of category types, offering a guide to scope that such platforms cover:

Accommodation and/or conferencing event systems
Attendance Monitoring
Business Intelligence
Category
Content Management System
CRM – Alumni
CRM – General
CRM – Internal Communications
CRM – Marketing
CRM – Research and Enterprise
CRM – Student Recruitment
Current Research Information System (CRIS)
Curriculum Management (Programme Planning)
Data Warehouse
Ebook Platform
Electronic Document Management & Records Management System (EDRMS)
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Enterprise Web & Staff/Student Portals
Estates
Finance
HR
IT Service Management Systems (Service Desk)
Learning Analytics
Library
Payroll
Publisher
Research Proposals, Grants and Contracts
Student Engagement
Student Evaluation of Teaching Software
Student Records
Timetabling
VLE

Where will statements be stored?

A respected name in the accessibility world, Huw Alexander of searchBOX has kindly agreed to host the statements. Huw also hosts ASPIRE, the eBook accessibility statements resource.

What do you need to do?

Check searchBOX Third Party Statements list to see if a platform has already been added.

If the platform is not already on the Third Party Statements list please add the platform information using the searchBOX submission form.

Please add as much information as you can for each platform e.g. including a link to any existing accessibility statements where known.

If the platform is already on the list:

Please check any information already there for completeness and add any extra information available to complete the record e.g. adding a link to an accessibility statement. You can submit any updates via the searchBOX submission form or you can email hello@textboxdigital.com. New information will be checked and and the central list updated.
If there is already a link to an existing statement please indicate how helpful you think the statement is using the like/dislike functions.

Encourage suppliers with missing or non-compliant statements for their platforms to complete the Third party Supplier Accessibility Statement template. Submit the updated compliant statement link to searchBOX.

If you already have a list of suppliers you can submit them directly to hello@textboxdigital.com rather than adding each one individually via the submission form.

The aim is to get much information on the site as possible in order that we can all refine it together, so please use whatever method you prefer.

Credits

Thank you to Huw Alexander, Ben Watson, James Church and George Rhodes for their help in preparing this guidance and providing so much of the momentum behind this initiative.