The UK Equality Act and PSBAR: digital obligations after Brexit

Image description: The Palace of Westminster and Big Ben at golden hour from across the Thames, the institutional anchor of UK accessibility law after Brexit.

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Britain left the European Union on 31 January 2020, but it did not leave the European accessibility framework. Two regimes still sit side by side in 2026 and together define what a UK organisation owes a disabled user online: the Equality Act 2010, a universal anti-discrimination statute that has applied to digital services since it consolidated and replaced the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 — known by the unlovely acronym PSBAR — which transposed the EU’s Web Accessibility Directive (2016/2102) into UK law before Brexit and survived withdrawal as retained EU law. The two work in tandem: PSBAR is the prescriptive technical regime for public bodies; the Equality Act is the universal duty that applies to everyone, public or private, that provides a service.

This piece is a 2026 primer on how the two regimes interact, how the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) enforces them, what the PSBAR 2.2 update — whose consultation closed on 14 February 2026 — proposes to change, and the route by which private digital-service suppliers, who are formally outside PSBAR’s scope, find themselves contractually pulled in through public-sector procurement clauses. For the wider regulatory map, see the national disability-rights regulations index and the EAA first-year enforcement report, which together place the UK’s post-Brexit regime in its European context.

The dual framework, in one paragraph

The Equality Act 2010 is the universal duty: any “service provider” — a category broad enough to capture private retailers, banks, transport operators, universities and charities — must not discriminate against disabled people in the way it offers or provides a service, and must make “reasonable adjustments” to remove substantial disadvantage. The Act does not name websites or mobile apps. It does not need to. Goods, facilities and services delivered online are services for the purposes of section 29, and the reasonable-adjustments duty in section 20 reaches the digital surface as surely as it reaches the front door. PSBAR sits on top of that universal duty for one specific class of body. It applies to public-sector bodies’ websites and mobile apps, sets a prescriptive technical standard (WCAG 2.2 level AA for new content from 23 June 2025 under the consultation track, alongside the longstanding 2.1 AA baseline), requires an accessibility statement to a specified template, and gives an enforcement role to the Government Digital Service (GDS) monitoring function and the EHRC.

The two regimes overlap rather than contradict. A council that fails PSBAR is also, almost by definition, in breach of the Equality Act’s reasonable-adjustments duty. A private retailer that fails on accessibility cannot be hit by GDS monitoring but can be sued under the Equality Act by an aggrieved consumer or pursued under the EHRC’s section 23 investigative powers. The dual structure means a UK organisation answering “is our site legal” has to answer two separate questions: have we met the technical standard, and have we met the universal duty.

The Equality Act 2010: the sections that bite online

The Equality Act consolidated nine pre-existing anti-discrimination statutes into a single framework in October 2010. For digital accessibility the load-bearing sections are not novel — they are inherited from the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, recast and broadened — but their application to web and app surfaces is now settled.

Section 20 — the reasonable-adjustments duty

Section 20 imposes three requirements: where a provision, criterion or practice puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage, the duty-holder must take reasonable steps to avoid the disadvantage; where a physical feature does so, reasonable steps to remove, alter or provide a means of avoiding it; and — crucially for digital services — where the absence of an auxiliary aid puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage, reasonable steps to provide that aid. The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s statutory Code of Practice on Services, Public Functions and Associations (2011) explicitly names websites, web-based services and the provision of information in accessible formats as covered by section 20. A screen-reader-incompatible checkout, a video without captions, a form that cannot be completed with keyboard alone — all are, in the Commission’s reading, failures of the reasonable-adjustments duty.

Two features of section 20 make it more demanding than equivalents in some other jurisdictions. The duty is anticipatory: a service provider must consider in advance what adjustments disabled people generally are likely to need, not wait for a request. And it is continuing: once an adjustment is required it remains required, so a site that was accessible at launch but is no longer accessible after a redesign has not discharged the duty by virtue of past compliance.

Section 29 — services and public functions

Section 29 prohibits discrimination by a person concerned with the provision of a service to the public or a section of the public. The definition reaches private commerce, professional services, transport, education-adjacent services, and digital platforms operating in the UK market. There is no public-private distinction in section 29 — the bookstore and the council both fall under it — and there is no minimum-revenue threshold that exempts a small operator. A sole-trader online shop is, in law, a service provider for these purposes.

Section 149 — the public-sector equality duty

Section 149 imposes on public authorities a further “public-sector equality duty” (PSED) to have due regard, in the exercise of their functions, to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. The PSED is process-based — it is about giving genuine consideration rather than achieving a particular outcome — but its procurement application is important: a contracting authority that does not write accessibility into the specification of a digital-services contract can be challenged for failing to discharge the duty before it signed.

PSBAR: the prescriptive layer for public bodies

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (SI 2018/952) transposed Directive (EU) 2016/2102 into UK law. The regulations entered into force on 23 September 2018, with phased deadlines: websites published after that date had to be compliant by 23 September 2019; websites published before that date had to be compliant by 23 September 2020; mobile applications had until 23 June 2021. After Brexit, PSBAR did not lapse. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 carried it across as retained EU law, and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 has — at least so far — left it on the statute book in operative form.

Who PSBAR applies to

PSBAR’s scope tracks the directive: it applies to “public-sector bodies” defined to include the State, regional and local authorities, bodies governed by public law, and associations formed by any of the above. In practice that captures central government departments and their executive agencies, devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the National Health Service and all NHS trusts, local councils, fire-and-rescue authorities, police forces, state-funded schools and most state-funded higher-education providers, and arms-length bodies in receipt of substantial public funding. The regulations explicitly exclude broadcasters (the BBC and other public-service broadcasters), some non-administrative aspects of certain public-service mutuals, archived content not updated since 23 September 2019, and live audio-only streams. Third-party content not under the body’s control — for instance, a hosted social-media plug-in — falls outside the regulations but is encouraged to meet the standard through procurement and partnership terms.

What PSBAR requires

PSBAR sets four duties. First, content must meet the technical standard — the current baseline is WCAG 2.1 level AA as adopted by the harmonised European standard EN 301 549, with the 2.2-update consultation now closed (more on this below). Second, the body must publish an accessibility statement to a prescribed template that identifies non-compliant content, gives reasons for non-compliance, notes a disproportionate-burden assessment where one is claimed, and explains how a user can request an accessible alternative or report a problem. Third, the body must respond to user complaints in good time. Fourth, the body must support the Cabinet Office monitoring function — which the Government Digital Service (GDS) Accessibility Monitoring Team operates — by responding to audit queries and submitting remediation plans.

The disproportionate-burden carve-out

PSBAR allows a public body to claim that meeting the requirements for specific content would impose a “disproportionate burden” and exempt that content on those grounds. The carve-out is not a blanket exemption: the body must complete a written assessment weighing the size and resources of the organisation, the estimated benefits to disabled users, the costs of accessibility against the wider organisational budget, and the frequency and duration of use of the content. The accessibility statement must record the assessment. In monitoring, GDS frequently finds the carve-out claimed without a documented assessment behind it — the most common formal defect identified across PSBAR audits since 2021. The 2026 update consultation tightens the standard of evidence required.

How the two regimes interact in practice

A useful way to read the dual framework is to ask, for any given UK organisation, which regime is the binding constraint and which is the backstop.

The pattern that emerges is unmistakable. PSBAR is a narrow but prescriptive regime; the Equality Act is a wide but principle-based one. For a UK provider that is neither a public body nor a public supplier, PSBAR is irrelevant on its face — but the Equality Act is not, and any provider whose digital surface is consumed by disabled users in the UK should treat WCAG 2.2 AA as the working approximation of what the reasonable-adjustments duty requires online, because that is the standard the EHRC, the courts, and the Commission’s Code of Practice will measure them against.

EHRC enforcement: what teeth look like

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is the independent statutory regulator created by the Equality Act 2006, with a remit covering the protected characteristics in the 2010 Act. Its enforcement powers under the 2006 Act — and, for PSBAR, under the Equality Act 2010 enforcement framework as extended by the 2018 regulations — are real but used selectively. Three tools matter most.

Section 23 agreements and section 21 unlawful-act notices

Under section 23 of the Equality Act 2006, the EHRC can enter a legally binding agreement with a service provider — typically following an investigation — under which the provider commits to specified accessibility improvements within a specified timeframe in exchange for the Commission not pursuing further enforcement. The agreements are public. Where a provider refuses to negotiate or breaches an agreement, section 21 lets the Commission issue an unlawful-act notice, requiring the provider to prepare an action plan; breach of the notice is itself an enforceable offence.

Judicial review

For public bodies, the most common route to PSBAR enforcement is judicial review of a body’s failure to discharge its statutory duty. The Commission will sometimes fund or support claimants; it can also intervene in proceedings as a non-party. Recent JR pressure has been concentrated on NHS trusts, three London boroughs, and a small number of central-government information services where the accessibility statement claimed compliance that GDS audits then contradicted.

Individual claims under the Equality Act

A disabled user who has been disadvantaged by a digital service can bring a claim under section 114 of the Equality Act in the county court — the venue for goods-and-services discrimination claims (employment claims go to the employment tribunal). Remedies include damages (including injury-to-feelings damages, which in the Vento bands now run from roughly £1,200 at the bottom to over £60,000 at the top), declarations, and orders for the provider to take steps. The procedural barriers are real — there is a six-month limitation period; legal aid is constrained — but the volume of digital-accessibility claims has risen materially since 2022 and now includes a recurring sub-stream of pre-action correspondence settled before issue.

The PSBAR 2.2 update: what the February 2026 consultation proposes

The PSBAR 2.2-update consultation, run by the Cabinet Office and the Government Digital Service jointly with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, opened in October 2025 and closed for responses on 14 February 2026. The headline proposal is to move the prescriptive technical standard from WCAG 2.1 AA to WCAG 2.2 AA, harmonising the UK regime with the latest version of EN 301 549 (which adopted 2.2 in its 2024 revision) and with the European Accessibility Act’s expectations for in-scope private-sector services from 28 June 2025.

The detail of the consultation, beyond the headline standard upgrade, runs to four further proposals worth flagging.

• A documented disproportionate-burden assessment becomes mandatory. Where the existing regulations require the body to “give due consideration” to disproportionate burden before claiming the carve-out, the proposed amendment requires a written assessment that names the four statutory factors and explains the weighing in each case. Absence of an assessment will be a regulatory breach in itself.
• Annual statement review with a fixed publication date. Accessibility statements would need to be reviewed at least annually and the review date stated on the statement. The current “review when significantly changed” language has produced statements that quietly age.
• Explicit mobile-app sampling. GDS monitoring has, since 2019, focused disproportionately on websites; the update gives the monitoring function an explicit mandate to sample mobile applications at a published cadence.
• Procurement-clause guidance. The Crown Commercial Service is to issue refreshed guidance that all public-procurement frameworks for digital services must require WCAG 2.2 AA conformance, EN 301 549 alignment where applicable, and supplier-side maintenance of an accessibility statement aligned with PSBAR. The change is in guidance, not in statute — but for framework-listed suppliers it operates as a hard requirement.

A government response to the consultation is expected in the second half of 2026, with statutory-instrument amendment of PSBAR likely in 2027 if the proposals are adopted as drafted.

How private suppliers get pulled in: the procurement route

Although PSBAR is, on its face, a public-sector regime, its practical reach extends far into the private sector through procurement. UK public contracts run into the tens of billions of pounds a year, and the Crown Commercial Service operates a portfolio of central frameworks — Digital Outcomes and Specialists, G-Cloud, Network Services, Crown Hosting Data Centres and others — through which most central-government and a large share of wider-public-sector digital procurement is routed. Every one of those frameworks now carries, by Cabinet Office policy, contractual clauses that require the supplier to deliver content meeting the prescriptive standard, to provide an accessibility statement, and to remediate accessibility defects on a schedule that mirrors PSBAR’s requirements for the procuring body.

The effect is significant. A SaaS vendor delivering a workflow tool to a Whitehall department, a design studio building a council intranet, a hosted-form provider supplying an NHS trust — none of them is in PSBAR’s statutory scope, but each of them is, in their contract, bound to PSBAR-equivalent standards. The procuring body remains the legally responsible party under PSBAR, but a supplier that delivers non-compliant content can be removed from the framework, lose the contract, and face damages for breach. The pattern is now sufficiently universal that suppliers who intend to do public-sector business in the UK treat WCAG 2.2 AA conformance as a baseline market-access requirement, not a contract-specific extra.

The same logic operates one tier up. A prime contractor on a major government programme will pass the procurement clauses through to its subcontractors, so a small specialist consultancy two layers down the supply chain is bound by terms that ultimately trace back to PSBAR. This procurement-through-the-tiers mechanism is the route by which a public-sector regime ends up shaping the accessibility expectations of the wider UK digital-services market — much as US Section 508 procurement clauses shape the federal contractor ecosystem.

What Brexit changed and what it did not

It is worth being precise about Brexit’s effect. The Withdrawal Act preserved PSBAR as retained EU law; the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 created a sunset framework but Cabinet Office and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology have left PSBAR on the active statute book. The UK is not bound to incorporate future revisions of the Web Accessibility Directive — but the 2026 consultation moves UK practice into alignment with EN 301 549 v3.2.1 anyway, because divergence costs more than it saves in a digital-services market that trades freely with the EU and serves UK users who also use EU services. The Equality Act 2010 is wholly domestic in origin and was unaffected by Brexit. Schedule 2 of the Withdrawal Agreement preserved citizens’ rights in Northern Ireland under the Protocol; the Equality Act 2010 already applies in Great Britain and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 still operates in Northern Ireland alongside.

The European Accessibility Act does not apply directly in the United Kingdom because the UK is no longer an EU Member State. But a UK-headquartered business that sells into the EU market is in scope of the EAA for its EU operations from 28 June 2025, and the practical engineering reality is that most UK-based providers building for both markets ship the same accessibility profile across them. For a comparative read see the EAA first-year enforcement report.

Practical implications: what UK organisations should do in 2026

For organisations weighing what compliance work to prioritise this year, three actions are worth singling out.

• Public-sector bodies should run a documented re-baseline against WCAG 2.2 AA rather than waiting for the consultation response. The standard’s new success criteria — focus appearance, dragging movements, target size, consistent help, redundant entry and accessible authentication — affect real surfaces that most public-sector services have not retested since 2021. Updating the accessibility statement to reflect 2.2 conformance ahead of any statutory change is also the simplest way to show the EHRC and GDS that a body is on the right side of the direction of travel.
• Private digital-service providers should audit their reasonable-adjustments posture under section 20. The anticipatory, continuing duty does not allow “we’ll fix it on request.” For an e-commerce checkout, a banking app, a transport-ticketing site, the question is whether the current build meets WCAG 2.2 AA in practice — and, if not, whether there is a documented remediation plan with dates. EHRC enquiries open with a request for both.
• Procurement teams should treat WCAG 2.2 AA as a hard supplier-selection criterion. The Crown Commercial Service guidance refresh is in train; framework operators are moving ahead of statutory change; and a supplier whose digital deliverables do not meet 2.2 is a procurement risk for the contracting authority’s PSED compliance, not merely for its PSBAR compliance.

Conclusion: a dual regime that holds together

Five years after Brexit, the UK’s digital-accessibility regime has not diverged in the direction many feared. The Equality Act remains the universal duty and the structural backstop; PSBAR remains the prescriptive layer for public bodies; the EHRC enforces both with limited but real teeth; and procurement clauses pull the private sector into the standard whether or not the regulations formally reach it. The 2026 consultation tidies up four operational shortcomings of the existing regulations — the disproportionate-burden evidence requirement, the annual statement review, mobile-app sampling, and procurement-clause guidance — but does not redesign the architecture. The framework is functioning. The questions for the next two years are about enforcement cadence, not statutory design.

For further reading on the UK regime and its European cousins, see the Web Accessibility Directive primer, the EN 301 549 explainer, the EAA first-year enforcement report, and the national disability-rights regulations index.

Primary sources

1. Equality Act 2010, c. 15 (UK), particularly sections 20, 29, 114 and 149. legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents
2. Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, SI 2018/952. legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/952/contents/made
3. Equality and Human Rights Commission. Services, Public Functions and Associations: Statutory Code of Practice (2011, with subsequent guidance updates). equalityhumanrights.com
4. Cabinet Office and Government Digital Service. Accessibility Monitoring Team annual reports (2021–2025). gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digital-service
5. Cabinet Office, GDS and DSIT. PSBAR 2.2 update consultation document (closed 14 February 2026).
6. European Union. Directive (EU) 2016/2102 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies. eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2016/2102/oj
7. ETSI. EN 301 549 v3.2.1 — Accessibility requirements for ICT products and services (2024).
8. European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, c. 16; Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, c. 28.
9. Crown Commercial Service. Digital Outcomes and Specialists framework — accessibility schedule, and refreshed guidance on accessibility in public procurement (2026 update).