What an accessibility statement must contain and how to write one well.
Required content
EU and Luxembourg law require an accessibility statement to include:
- Identification of the service.
- Conformance status: full, partial, or non-compliant.
- The applicable referential and version.
- Scope of the audit (what was evaluated and what was not).
- Known accessibility limitations and exceptions.
- Date of the most recent audit.
- Date of the next planned review.
- Contact information for accessibility feedback.
- Enforcement procedure (where users can escalate complaints).
The exact phrasing of some sections is prescribed by law. Use the statement template editor to enforce this. See /docs/statement-template-editor.md.
Tone
- Factual, not defensive. "The service does not conform to criterion X.Y because Z" is correct. "We are working hard to improve accessibility" is filler.
- Specific, not generic. A list of known issues with criterion references is useful. A vague disclaimer is not.
- First-person from the service operator's perspective, not the auditor's.
Common quality problems
- Listing only the conformance percentage and skipping the issues section.
- Promising remediation timelines that are not tracked.
- Omitting the contact and enforcement sections.
- Failing to update the statement after the next audit.
Rolling forward
The statement is a living document. After each audit:
- Update the audit date and conformance status.
- Refresh the issues list.
- Set the next review date.
- Confirm contact information is still valid.
Relationship to the audit
The statement is not the audit report. The report is the technical document; the statement is the public declaration distilled from it. Many statements pull issues directly from finding text, which is why finding text quality matters. See finding quality.