Select committee: Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 6
Fourth Report - Accessibility of products and services to disabled people
Published 19 Mar 2024
Paragraph 28
Addressed to Government Equalities Office
Women and Equalities Committee National Disability Strategy All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Given that disabled people increasingly need access to online services, information, and social networks, it is imperative that the Government acts on what it has described as the “persistently poor accessibility of private sector websites” without further delay. As a priority, private sector websites and applications which provide essential products and services should be subject to the same regulations as the public sector. Concurrently, Ministers should work with businesses, the Disability and Access Ambassadors and Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) to lay the ground for legislative action across the other parts of the private sector. The Government should provide an update on its progress on this recommendation within six months of the publication of this report.
From: Women and Equalities Committee, Fourth Report - Accessibility of products and services to disabled people (HC 605), paragraph 28, 19 March 2024
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 29 May 2024.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government's response sets out existing work on each area, says it is "pleased" to restart the Extra Costs Taskforce, and states that legislative options on private sector website accessibility "are no longer available" at this stage of the Parliamentary session.
- On Disability and Access Ambassadors, the government says the programme is designed to be DAA-led, not for "officials tasking DAAs with specific deliverables", and that research into private sector accessibility is to be published in spring 2024.
- On the Extra Costs Taskforce, the government is "pleased that we can restart the work"; the Disability Unit is working up a project plan and will engage stakeholders "in due course". No establishment date is stated.
- On private sector websites, DSIT has convened a cross-Whitehall ministerial group and, "where appropriate", will seek to incorporate lessons from the public sector regulations into its consideration of private sector web accessibility.
- On food packaging, the government says it is "keen to look at" the issue and is "interested in seeing how these trials work in the first instance", noting factors such as cost and practical viability.