WAD and documents published before 23 September 2018

The Web Accessibility Directive (Directive (EU) 2016/2102) requires public sector bodies to make their websites and mobile apps accessible, including the documents on them. It leaves out one large group of older documents, then pulls part of that group back in.

The exclusion

The Directive does not apply to office file formats published before 23 September 2018 (Article 1(4)(a)). Office file formats are documents not intended primarily for use on the web but included in web pages, such as PDF and Microsoft Office documents or their open source equivalents (recital 26).

The catch: active administrative processes

The same provision brings a document back into scope when it is needed for active administrative processes relating to the tasks the body performs. Our reading: if a person still needs the document to deal with the body today, its publication date does not take it out. A 2015 application form that is still the form people fill in is in scope. A 2015 annual report kept for the record is not.

Content that qualifies as an archive is excluded on a similar test: it is neither needed for active administrative processes nor updated or edited after 23 September 2019 (Article 1(4)(h)).

What to do with the older documents

• List the documents published before 23 September 2018 that are still on the site.
• Mark those still used in a live process. They need to be accessible, or replaced with an accessible version.
• Name the rest in the accessibility statement as outside the Directive, and say how to ask for an accessible copy: excluded content is exactly what the feedback mechanism is for (recital 46).

In the UK

The UK applies the same rule, in almost the same words, through regulation 4(2)(a) of the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.