Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the availability of documents on the gov.uk website in alternative digital formats for people with disabilities.

GOV.UK has a key role in ensuring the UK public sector meets its accessibility standards, leading by example and providing the necessary support to departments who own services on GOV.UK. Government departments publish documents on GOV.UK in a range of formats; to make these available to the widest range of people we take steps to ensure the documents are accessible. This approach ensures that accessibility is at the core of our standards for building and maintaining content.

We work to update existing documents in non-accessible formats, and ensure new documents meet the requirements of The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. Documents published before 23rd September 2018 are currently exempt from accessibility regulations and may not be accessible. However, we update these on a case by case basis, and alternative formats are provided on request through GOV.UK. Alternative formats (such as audio, Braille, Moon, British Sign Language interpreted versions) are provided in accordance with reasonable adjustments under Equality Act 2010 upon request.