Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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694. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence the way in which his Department and agencies under his remit are meeting the requirement to have a statement on the compliance of their websites and mobile applications with the regulations under the directive 2016/2102 (EU), as articulated in SI No. 358/2020 - European Union (Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Applications of Public Sector Bodies) Regulations 2020; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31279/21]

Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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695. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence the way in which his Department and agencies under his remit are meeting the requirement to subject to Regulation 6, public sector bodies shall, in accordance with Regulation 3, take necessary measures to make their websites and mobile applications more accessible by making them perceivable, operable, understandable and robust under the directive 2016/2102 (EU), as articulated in SI No. 358/2020 - European Union (Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Applications of Public Sector Bodies) Regulations 2020; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31297/21]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 694 and 695 together.

I wish to advise the Deputy that the compliant accessibility statement for Gov.ie, the website that currently hosts 15 of the 19 Government Departments, including the Department of Defence, is available at the following link; www.gov.ie/en/help/accessibility. I understand all remaining Government Departments will have moved to gov.ie by the end of August.

Gov.ie is the main Government website and recorded over 122 million page views in 2020. Gov.ie partially complies with the double-A Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 standards, and the four principles of accessibility in that it is perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. This is similar to most other government sites across the European Union. Accessibility to gov.ie is being enhanced by improving the level of plain English used for services on the site. This allows users of all levels to be able to find and understand information as quickly as possible. In addition, the gov.ie team have continuously performed multiple accessibility reviews since the website went live. The gov.ie team has engaged with and continues to engage with an accessibility expert to outline all accessibility requirements. Following the last accessibility audit, 65 issues were identified and action taken to rectify and resolve these issues. In addition, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) have since released updates to the core code of the gov.ie website to improve accessibility.

All other sites managed by OGCIO are currently being moved to a new Content Management System (CMS) which has been built with WCAG compatibility in mind. This project is ongoing with satisfactory progress being made this year.

The position in relation to the branches under my Department is set out as follows.

The website of the Office of Emergency Planning falls under the remit of OGCIO, hosted on gov.ie and includes the sites formally designated as emergencyplanning.ie; winterready.ie; and summerready.ie.

The website of Civil Defence is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Ireland. When the Civil Defence website was developed it met the Accessibility Guidelines of 1.0, which were the guidelines at the time of development. Following the introduction of updated guidelines 2.1, the Department of Defence has engaged with the developers of the Civil Defence website in order to review and report on what action is needed in order to comply with the updated Accessibility Guidelines 2.10.