- Scope
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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 Three Unitary Authorities Proposal - Oxfordshire Local Government Reorganisation and supporting documents which are in PDF format.
- Benefits of making accessible
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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
- Burden of making accessible
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The draft suite of documents comprises approximately 282 pages, many of which are detailed and complex.
It is estimated that it would take an officer at least 45 minutes per page to reformat and edit each draft document to meet accessibility standards.
This equates to approximately 211 hours of staff time.
Given current resources and operational priorities, allocating this volume of time to edit and reformat draft documents - when the Council is in the process of developing its preferred option for Local Government Reorganisation - undertaking it when the full suite of documents is in draft version would represent a diversion of resources at a critical time for the Council.
- Other factors
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Also relevant to this decision are that:
- The Council has a duty to be transparent in its business operations and outcomes, so it took the decision to publish the PDFs as a means to making these documents available on the Council’s website
- Due to the nature of this content, there was a need to publish the documents quickly, so the Council took the decision to publish the PDF documents
- Some of the documents are from a third-party source or organisations
- Some of the documents are technical in nature and not frequently accessed by the public
- The Council have and will always assist with accessible versions on request
- Assessment
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Many of the draft documents contain complex tables and images that cannot be easily converted into accessible formats without extensive intervention.
After weighing the benefits of accessibility and considering the scale of work required for the estimated effort in creating HTML versions of the draft documents, and the limited resources available, the Council has concluded that making the full suite of draft documents accessible is beyond the resources available to them, which would impose a disproportionate burden on the Council.
While the Council has determined that making the full suite of draft documents accessible would impose a disproportionate burden at this time, they remain committed to meeting their legal responsibilities to provide accessible information. To support this, the Council will take the following steps:
- Provide alternative formats on request
- Prioritise accessibility for future publications
- Date of assessment
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6 November 2025
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