Why this matters
A public sector duty, plus a wider one that doesn't care about your sector.
The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 [SI 2018/952] implement EU Directive 2016/2102 and require the websites and apps of public sector bodies — UK universities and colleges included — to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA via the harmonised standard EN 301 549. That covers course video hosted on your VLE the same way it covers the rest of the page.
Separately, the Equality Act 2010 places an anticipatory duty on service providers — including universities that fall outside the 2018 Regulations' public-sector scope — to make reasonable adjustments for disabled students before a request is even made, not after. Between the two, the practical accessibility bar for course video lands in the same place regardless of an institution's precise legal status.
"Our lecture archive predates 2020 — doesn't that get an exemption?"
Partly, and it's worth having the boundary written down before your accessibility officer is asked.
Regulation 4 of the 2018 Regulations exempts pre-recorded time-based media — audio and video — published before 23 September 2020 from the accessibility requirement. A lecture recorded and published before that date, and never touched since, can sit outside the Regulations' technical duty.
It stops applying the moment that video is re-published, re-linked into a current module, or reused for a running cohort — at that point it is live course content again, not an untouched archive. And the exemption only ever covered the 2018 Regulations: the Equality Act's anticipatory duty was never time-limited by it, so a disabled student's reasonable-adjustment claim can reach even genuinely pre-2020, unmodified material.
Clause by clause
Where each effect sits in the Regulations.
Every row below cites the actual regulation or WCAG success criterion, so your accessibility office can check it against the text rather than take our word for it.
| Regulation | What it requires | Where Lecture Studio applies |
|---|---|---|
| SI 2018/952 · Regulation 4 | Websites and apps published by a public sector body — including a university's course video — must conform to WCAG 2.1 AA via EN 301 549, subject to named exemptions. | Full production pipeline |
| WCAG 1.2.2 · Level A | "Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media." | Transcript and CaptionsPresenter Plus – Captions |
| WCAG 1.4.3 · Level AA | "Text... has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1" against its background — including burned-in captions and on-screen cards. | Title CardSpeaker CardPresenter Plus – Captions |
| WCAG 2.4.6 · Level AA | "Headings and labels describe topic or purpose" — each unit of video should be identifiable on its own. | Title CardLearning Objectives and Key Takeaways |
| Equality Act 2010 · ss. 20–21 | An anticipatory duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled students, independent of an institution's status under the 2018 Regulations. | Full production pipelineTranscript and Captions |
One thing your accessibility office should know about scope
The 2018 Regulations only bind public sector bodies — the large majority of UK universities, but not every independent or privately-constituted provider. That distinction matters less in practice than it sounds: the Equality Act 2010's anticipatory duty applies to any service provider, public status or not, and Jisc and AbilityNet — the two bodies most UK institutions look to for sector guidance — both treat WCAG 2.1 AA as the working benchmark either way.
So whichever instrument your legal team cites — the 2018 Regulations directly, or the Equality Act as the backstop — the production standard the video itself needs to meet does not change.
Lecture Studio addresses the technical conformance standard — WCAG 2.1 AA — for the video content it produces. Your institution's accessibility office remains responsible for the rest of your digital accessibility programme: PDFs, VLE templates, third-party tools, and the accessibility statement itself. We'd recommend reviewing this mapping with that office before it is published.
Try it
Sixteen effects, one click each.
Click any effect on the left to play a real sample in the frame — the same clips referenced in the mapping above.
From the blog
Seven questions to ask before you sign.
We wrote the evaluation criteria we would want used on us. Some of these we answer well. One of them we answer badly, and it is named — the questions that separate a real capability from a good deck.
A buyer's guide for universities procuring lecture video production, wherever they are.
Bring your course video up to WCAG 2.1 AA.
Talk to us about a pilot on your next batch of lecture recordings.