Accessible documents policy
How Homes England has ensured the documents it publishes are accessible.
This policy explains how accessible the documents Homes England publishes on GOV.UK are. It covers:
- PDFs
- spreadsheets
- presentations
- other types of document
It does not cover content published on GOV.UK in HTML format – this is covered in GOV.UK’s accessibility statement.
Using our documents
Homes England publishes documents in a range of formats, including PDFs, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.
We want as many people as possible to be able to use those documents. For example, when we produce a document we make sure to:
- provide an HTML option where possible
- tag headings and other parts of the document properly, so screen readers can understand the page structure
- make sure we include alt text alongside non-decorative images, so people who cannot see them understand what they’re there for
- avoid using tables, except when we’re presenting data
- write in plain English
How accessible our documents are
New documents we publish and documents you need to download or fill in to access one of the services we provide should be fully accessible.
However, we know that most of our older documents (published before 23 September 2018) are not accessible. For example, some of them:
- are not tagged up properly – for example, they do not contain proper headings
- have colour contrast issues that may make text hard to read for some users
- are not written in plain English
- contain images that are not accompanied by a text alternative
This mostly applies to documents we keep on GOV.UK for transparency reasons – documents that are not necessary for our users to complete a task. These older documents are exempt from the regulations, so we do not currently have any plans to make them accessible.
But if you need to access information in one of these document types, you can contact us and ask for an alternative format.
Reporting accessibility problems
Email [email protected] if you:
- need information on this website in a different format
- find any problems not listed on this page
- think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 3 working days.
Enforcement procedure
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’).
If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
Technical information about the accessibility of our documents
Homes England is committed to making our documents accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
The documents Homes England publishes are partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
All Homes England documents not listed below under ‘disproportionate burden’ are either fully accessible, or have been published with an accompanying alternative version (typically in an HTML format).
Disproportionate burden
To date, Homes England has published 999 PDF files in response to Request for Information (RFI) requests, and will continue to publish these as requests come in. We have assessed the effort required to make this content accessible and, when considered against the very limited audience for such files, deem it a disproportionate burden to fix them.
Homes England also publishes forms to GOV.UK in both PDF and Word document format. Currently the only way to capture user information in a fully accessible way on GOV.UK is to create a ‘service’. We deem it a disproportionate burden to create services for each of the 41 Homes England forms currently on GOV.UK.
As part of our disproportionate burden assessment, we have also conducted an Equality Impact Assessment to ensure no group with protected characteristics is adversely affected by our document remediation plans.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).
The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix these Home Building Fund developer case studies.
Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
How we tested our documents
We tested 848 file attachments attached to GOV.UK pages published or updated since 23 September 2018. The test was carried out by Homes England staff.
We tested:
- PDFs
- Word documents
- Excel spreadsheets
These file attachments were then either withdrawn from GOV.UK, converted to HTML, or have been listed as a disproportionate burden as detailed above. More than 200 of these attachments were found to have been first published before 23 September 2018 and not updated since – making them exempt from the regulations.
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
Homes England is adopting an HTML-first publishing approach, with the exception of particularly long or complex documents, for which we will aim to provide an HTML alternative either upon or shortly after publication.
We are also reviewing the accessibility of documents that are exempt for the regulations, such as those published before September 2018, to ensure our GOV.UK content is as accessible as possible.
We will consider individual requests for reasonable adjustments under Equalities legislation in relation to any of our documents on GOV.UK.
Review dates for this page
We will review this statement and update accordingly in March 2024.
This page was prepared on 16 March 2021. It was last updated on 31 March 2023.