Pôle emploi, taxes, Urssaf… Administration websites which are not 100% accessible to people with disabilities incur a fine of 50,000 euros from Monday, a sanction which will punish breaches prohibited by law since 2005.
An order presented in September to the Council of Ministers provides that bad performers in the administration will first receive a formal notice from the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom), before being financially sanctioned if they still fail to comply with the accessibility requirement. “If a sanctioned breach persists more than six months after the imposition of the initial sanction, a new sanction may be imposed,” the government then specified.
The administration also remains liable to a fine of 25,000 euros if it breaches a series of additional obligations: publication of information on the accessibility of the site, possibility for users to report breaches, etc.
Mandatory since 2005
Accessibility of administration websites to disabled people has been theoretically compulsory since February 2005. In practice, successive governments have continued to postpone the timetable for making public sites accessible.
The latest objective stated by the executive is to make the nearly 250 most common online procedures fully accessible by the end of 2025.
The government considers an approach to be 100% accessible if it meets all the criteria of its “General framework for improving accessibility” (RGAA).
78 usual “not accessible” procedures
Of the 248 most common online procedures, barely 6 were 100% accessible in July 2023, according to the latest analysis carried out by the government. Requests for Crit’Air stickers, referrals to the Defender of Rights or requests for legal aid thus stand out among the online procedures most accessible to people with disabilities.
The government lists 125 partially accessible procedures (between 50% and 99% compliance with the RGAA), or half of the 248 most common formalities: declaration of birth, certificate of vaccination against Covid-19, request for accommodation in a university campus, etc.
Finally, 78 usual procedures are not accessible to people with disabilities, including scholarship applications for students, registration in the national register for refusal of organ donations or applications for European health insurance cards.