Oxford Local Plan 2045 Proposed Submission: Site Capacity Assessment documents - 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 Oxford Local Plan 2045 Proposed Submission: Site Capacity Assessment documents which are in PDF format.

The benefits of creating accessible versions of these PDFs would be:

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

The documents relate to the Regulation 19 Consultation for the 2045 Local Plan.The documents include a Sustainability Appraisal of over 53 sites (as individual documents) which are potential site allocations. The appraisal is a technical assessment that includes colour-coding in tables and maps.   

The expectation is that the documents are made publicly available as part of the Council’s statutory duties; however, due to the high volume of information, number of, and nature of the documents we do not deem it suitable to convert these documents into accessible versions.

Also relevant to this decision are that:

• We are legally required to make the documents available to the public, so the documents must be published on the Council’s website
• Thus far we have not received requests for additionally accessible versions of these documents when we have published similar versions before. We have taken steps to re-format to make as accessible as possible
• The documents do 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 site assessments include multiple elements including maps and tables. The text is formatted into columns, with colour-coded scores. These elements make accessibility difficult.

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

30 January 2026