Oxford Local Plan 2042 Preferred Options: Regulation 18 Consultation document - Disproportionate burden assessments for digital accessibility

Accessibility legislation (on legislation.gov.uk website) states that public sector websites must publish content in an accessible format, unless doing so would impose a disproportionate burden on the organisation. If that is the case, an assessment of the extent to which compliance with the accessibility requirement imposes a disproportionate burden must be carried out.

This is a Disproportionate Burden Assessment for the First Draft Oxford Local Plan 2042 (Regulation 18) document which is in PDF format.

The benefits of creating an HTML version of this PDF would be:

• a fully accessible version for all users to access
• an easily searchable and indexable version

The document relates to the Regulation 18 Consultation for the 2042 Local Plan. The document includes 8 chapters with draft policies, as well as a glossary and various appendices. It includes diagrams, tables, lists and charts.    

The expectation is that the document is made publicly available as part of the Council’s statutory duties; however, due to the high volume of information and document size we do not deem it suitable to convert this document into an accessible version.

Also relevant to this decision are that:

• We are legally required to make the document available to the public, so the document must be published on the Council’s website
• We have not in the past received requests for additionally accessible versions of the document
• The document does meet accessibility requirements for a large number of users, although some groups will find it disproportionately difficult
• We will always assist with accessible versions on request

The draft plan document includes multiple elements – text, policy boxes, charts and diagrams, tables, pictures and text formatted into columns - that may make accessibility difficult.

The document can be upgraded or where not deemed to be required can be removed from the webpages, and we will provide a suitable version on request.

Having considered the estimated effort involved in creating an accessible version of this document, we have concluded that the work required is beyond the resources available to us. This represents a disproportionate burden on the organisation.

27 June 2025