West End and Osney Mead Supplementary Planning Document 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 12 West End and Osney Mead Supplementary Planning Document 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

Due to the complexity of the diagrams, illustrations, maps and tables in these documents (not just in the SPD itself but the associated documents in particular including the Spatial Framework and Design Guide), we’ve estimated that it would take 48 days of a content designer’s time to create accessible versions of these PDFs (assuming an average of 30 minutes of work per page).

Also relevant to this decision are that:

• We are legally required to make the documents available to the public, so the documents will be published on the Council’s website
• Interest in the documents is low
• The documents do meet accessibility requirements for the majority of users, although some groups will find it disproportionately difficult
• We will assist with accessible versions on request

Having considered the estimated effort involved in making the documents fully accessible, along with the low demand to date, we have concluded that the work involved would be a poor use of staff time. However, we will assist with accessible versions if requested.

16 January 2026