Accessibility statement

Overview

Every school website has an Accessibility statement page. The page tells visitors how accessible the website is, what to do if they cannot use part of it, and who to contact.

The page is made for you the first time someone opens the website's admin area after it was added, so you do not need to write it. You can edit it like any other page.

It says three things:

• What the website does to help. The skip link at the top of each page, labelled menus for screen readers, slideshows that can be paused, and, when they are switched on, the accessibility button, the cookie banner, writing help for staff and the Translate tab. This part updates itself: if you switch the accessibility button off, the statement stops mentioning it.
• What your school does. Alt text on pictures, sensible headings and link text, captions on videos and documents that work with a screen reader. These are promises about your own content, so check you can keep them. Edit the list if not.
• How to ask for another format or report a problem. This uses the email address, phone number and address in smartOptions → School details. If none are set, it asks visitors to contact the school office.

It does not claim that your website meets a particular standard, such as WCAG 2.2 AA. Only an audit can show that, and a statement that claims more than is true is worse than none. It ends with the month it was last reviewed.

Link to it

The Realsmart bar at the bottom of every page does not link to the statement, so add it to one of your menus, for example alongside your privacy notice:

1. Go to Appearance → Menus and choose the menu.
2. Under Pages, tick Accessibility statement and click Add to Menu.
3. Click Save Menu.

Check and edit it

1. Go to Pages and open Accessibility statement.
2. Read it. Change anything that is not true of your school, for example a promise you cannot keep.
3. If your school has known problems, such as older scanned PDFs, add them under What may not be accessible.
4. Click Update.

The list of what the website does to help is the only part you cannot edit in the page. It is a single block that stays up to date by itself. Leave it where it is.

Review the statement at least once a year, and change "Last reviewed" when you do.

Contact details

If the page says "contact the school office", your school's contact details are not filled in. Go to smartOptions → School details and add the email address and phone number. Then open the page and type the same details into the sentence about contacting the school office.

If you already have a statement

A school that already has a page called "Accessibility statement" keeps its own, and nothing is added.

Remove it

To unpublish the page, set it to Draft. The page is not made again. Moving the page to the bin does the same. A new one is only made on a school that has never had one. Take it out of any menu you added it to.

Website compliance

Website compliance (Compliance in the menu) lists the accessibility statement as a recommended page. It finds this page by its title, so keep "Accessibility statement" in the title. If a school unpublishes it, Compliance shows it as missing and offers a draft to start from.

Troubleshooting

The statement is not in the footer

Why it happens: the Realsmart bar at the bottom of the page stopped linking to it on 28 October 2026.

Fix: add it to a menu, as in Link to it.