Disproportionate burden assessments

We are required by law to carry out disproportionate burden assessments where we are not able to meet our legal obligation to reach the WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standard.

This assessment relates to our accessibility audit on PDFs and other documents on our main website (www.slough.gov.uk) using data taken from July 2023 to June 2024.

Benefits

Making all our PDFs and documents accessible would benefit our users by:

• ensuring they are fully accessible to all
• providing easier access to council services
• making the documents more searchable if converted to HTML.

Burden

Our analytics tool, Google Analytics, has found 956 document pages within our site. Some of these were published after 23 September 2018. Certain documents published prior to 23 September 2018 are required to meet accessibility standards as they are among the most viewed documents or are essential to providing our services.

The total number of users of these 956 document pages from July 2023 to June 2024 was 83,318. In the same duration:

• the highest number of users for the most popular document page was 9,204
• 107 of our document pages each had one user and
• a total of 347 document pages having nine or less users each.

Our assessment of the burden of making these documents into an accessible format is:

• it is difficult to assess how long it would take to make every document accessible without first reviewing each one. Some documents would also require the relevant department’s input. If it took approximately between one and 51.8 hours depending on length and complexity, the cost to the council, depending on the grade of the post working on this work will be around £26.40 to £29.15 to around £1,366 to £1,510 per document to review and fix each of them within scope.
• prioritising document accessibility could negatively impact the posting, updating and maintaining of our essential service information on the website and others that we manage
• due to the council’s current financial situation, we are currently unable to employ additional staff to make documents accessible: Council pauses non-essential spending following Section 114 notice and Council accepts review reports and looks to the future
• additional costs would impact the budget negatively
• interest in some documents is low-
• when requested, the council will assist in providing documents in alternative formats to support individual accessibility needs.

Our organisation's size and resources

Slough Borough Council is a unitary authority, going through some huge financial issues as described above, with the future of the council looking to be downsized between 2021 and 2026.

Our current resources available to tackle outstanding accessibility issues are limited. There are 2 FTE roles within the council that directly assist with issues related to making documents accessible.

To fix existing documents or convert existing documents into HTML, resources would need to be diverted from:

• identifying and remedying other accessibility issues which affect people online and conducting accessibility checks on other third-party Slough Borough Council sites 
• posting, editing and maintaining information about essential council services available from the main website as well as essential information on our other sites and
• designing documents for essential services
• works to improve customer journeys and experience on the Slough Borough Council website.

Slough Borough Council does not currently have the resources to outsource this work.

Effort has been made to ensure documents, which between July 2023 and June 2024 had 2000 or more users (which represents less than 1% of our active users in the same duration) are accessible. We will strive to meet accessibility standards on any new PDFs or other documents we publish. 

Our Accessibility Statement (as per requirements) includes our webmanager@slough.gov.uk email address for anyone to get in touch if they have any issues with the Slough Borough Council website (www.slough.gov.uk) and documents within it. We are open to being approached on any accessibility issue.

Within the council, staff awareness on the importance of accessibility is being incorporated into events and activities which includes:

• providing guidance and training to teams on creating accessible documents
• supplying reminders and best practice tips through internal communication forums and newsletters
• creating accessible content training courses within the council’s intranet and talent management system, Cornerstone for staff to access and learn from
• engaging with services who have invested in third-party software to make sure documents produced by them and need to be posted on the Slough Borough Council website are accessible.

Assessment

The council believes that making all existing documents on the Slough Borough Council website accessible would be an inefficient use of limited staff resources. This would impose a disproportionate burden in terms of cost and time - especially with the low demand on many of the documents which have been accessed between July 2023 and June 2024.