Publish an accessibility statement
An accessibility statement is a publicly available statement that describes your organisational commitment to accessibility, the current accessibility of your ebooks, and your future plans for improving this. An accessibility statement is a legal requirement in many countries, with templates provided and minimum legal wording. You can find out more about this in our Learn section.
In general, this is what you need to include in an accessibility statement:
- A statement of organisational commitment to accessibility
- Initially, we suggest that the statement applies only to your ebook files as a whole, with plans to include your full website at a later time
- The date the statement was written
- Contact details for where accessibility enquiries can be sent to at the press. This is an important mechanism and you may also want to devise a system for managing these enquiries
And either:
Using your completed VPAT, describe:
- Overall whether you are compliant with legal minimum standards: fully, partially, or most of the time not compliant
- A list of the known aspects that are not compliant (e.g. some books do not have ALT text)
- Broadly how and when you will address these non-compliant aspects
Or:
- A statement that accessibility is a disproportionate burden (if you write this, you must provide an analysis evidencing this that can be produced on request)
We recommend publishing this statement on your website, and reviewing it every year.
For more detailed information and examples, see our page Accessibility Statements.