Oxford Local Plan 2045: Examination documents - Disproportionate burden assessments for digital accessibility

Scope

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 following documents which are in PDF and Excel format:

Benefits of making accessible

The benefits of creating an accessible version of these documents would be:

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

These documents relate to the Examination for the 2045 Local Plan. There are around 600 documents, many of which are extremely long and contain complex tables, graphs, data, images and references, all of which make producing fully accessible documents extremely difficult.    

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 and document size we do not deem it suitable to convert the documents into accessible versions.

Other factors

Also relevant to this decision are that:

  • We are legally required to make these documents available to the public, so the documents must be published on the Council’s website
  • We have not in the past received requests for additionally accessible versions of similar documents
  • 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
Assessment

The Oxford Local Plan 2045 Examination documents include multiple elements - text, policy boxes, charts and diagrams, tables, pictures and text formatted into columns - that may make accessibility difficult.

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.

Date of assessment

6 August 2026

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