From year to year, a less disproportionate burden?

What has been the evolution of accessibility statements on the issue of disproportionate burden in three years?

Friday, January 26, 2024

Public bodies may exempt certain content published online from the accessibility rules on the grounds of "disproportionate burden" when it is reasonably impossible to make a content or feature accessible. This wording takes into account the costs that would have to be incurred in relation to the estimated benefit for people with disabilities.

Illustration of an office worker overloaded with files — Photo: iStock / cyano66

This content and functionality must be precisely listed in the statement. Alternatives must be able to offer equivalent content and functions... provided that their production does not itself constitute a disproportionate burden.

One website in two now has an accessibility statement

In December 2023, we took a look at all the public websites in Luxembourg and came to this initial conclusion: although this is a legal obligation, just over half of these sites (51%) currently have an accessibility statement. As for mobile apps, the situation is even worse: only 13% have one.

It is precisely this statement that informs users with disabilities whether the site is compliant (non-compliant, partially compliant, compliant) in terms of digital accessibility and specifies, point by point, each feature and content that has been deemed non-compliant following an audit. Finally, it lists the inaccessible elements on the grounds of disproportionate burden.

Check our page on digital accessibility obligations, which includes a section on the accessibility statement, to check whether yours covers the essential elements. It goes without saying that this statement must be... accessible. To this end, a form for drafting the statement is at your disposal.

The statement exists... is it up to date?

Just as digital accessibility is an ongoing process, the statement should be regularly updated. But many of the statements submitted in 2020 have never been updated. In total, of the 418 statements recorded, only 68 have been updated and sent to the Information and Press Service... that's around 16%.

PDF, browsing, authentication: the top 3 exemptions

Three points clearly dominate the derogations for disproportionate burden, first and foremost office documents (PDF and Office files), which are used massively by certain administrations and whose accessibility is more difficult to ensure than information published in HTML format.

This is closely followed by issues relating to keyboard navigation and the accessibility of navigation menus: if these features are not compliant, users with disabilities are de facto prevented from accessing the entire site or, in a better case, they find it particularly difficult to use.

Finally, sites and apps that use authentication procedures systematically cite the LuxTrust login system, a third-party service over which they have no control.

Graph 1. Level of compliance of audited sites in 2023 (see description below).

Other, less frequently mentioned issues relate to search features, old content, links with irrelevant accessible names, poorly formatted lists and headings, videos without captions or text transcripts, and unidentified language changes.

Fewer claims for disproportionate burden: good news?

In 2021, two-thirds of sites and apps that submitted an accessibility statement mentioned one or more disproportionate burdens. This rate has fallen sharply to just one third of statements in 2023. Although this change is to be welcomed a priori, and would suggest that measures have been taken to remedy certain cases that were considered too difficult to deal with at the time, the most likely explanation is undoubtedly to be found in the more representative number of statements, which has almost quadrupled in the space of three years, rising from 118 to 418 by the end of 2023.

A point of methodology