Higher Education sector lacking time to address accessibility, says survey
Annie Mannion | 16 Jan 2026Higher and further education (HE and FE) professionals were keen to provide their insights and opinions on digital accessibility in AbilityNet’s Attitudes to Digital Accessibility Survey 2025.
And from the survey analysis outlined in our recent report, what is the HE and FE sector telling us most clearly? There's not enough time available to achieve digital accessibility goals.
Limited or no time allocated was cited as a bigger barrier for delivering digital accessibility in the HE and FE sector, with 61% of respondents ticking it, compared with 41% of all-sector respondents.
This year, 'meeting legal requirements' is again the leading motivating for delivering digital accessibility in all sectors, but it was a bigger motivator for the HE sector, as 86% cited it compared with 72% from the all-sector responses overall.
The annual AbilityNet survey was live from July to September 2025, and of those who completed the survey, 17% (87) of the 507 overall responses were people working in HE and FE institutions.
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Accessibility confidence and perceived leadership priority gaps
Reflecting the overall survey results, the HE and FE sector also shows higher individual confidence in accessibility than in organisational confidence.
In HE and FE, 73% of HE respondents are confident in their individual understanding of digital accessibility.
Confidence drops to 24% for how respondents perceive their organisation’s confidence. This is similar to all respondents.
Digital accessibility is perceived as a lower priority in the HE sector, than in other sectors. Over half of HE and FE respondents (55%) told us that digital accessibility was a low or very low priority for their leadership team. This is much higher than all respondents – where 26% felt their leadership team did not prioritise digital accessibility.
Digital accessibility was not as much an increased focus for HE and FE in the last year, compared with other sectors. Nearly half (47%) of HE and FE respondents told us that their organisation has increased its focus on digital accessibility in the past year, which is 12 percentile points lower than the figure for all sector respondents.
Say hi at Bett 2026!At-a-glance HE sector findings
- Training was the most common accessibility approach for HE and FE and all respondents, but was more prevalent in HE and FE (79% v 64%).
- HE and FE mirrors all respondents with not expecting their organisation to increase its spending on digital accessibility in the coming year.
- HE and FE carried out lower levels of user testing compared to all respondents, and was less likely to plan to do user testing in the future.
- HE and FE may offer better development for digital accessibility professionals. 60% of HE and FE respondents agree that their organisation helps individuals to develop the skills needed to deliver digital accessibility. This was six percentile points higher than all respondents.
- Training opportunities to develop digital accessibility were more common in the HE and FE sector. However, a specific budget for accessibility training, and support to gain accreditations in digital accessibility were a lot lower than all respondents.
- All barriers to delivering digital accessibility were more prevalent for HE and FE respondents, apart from ‘lack of internal skills or experience’ which was slightly lower.
- No budget was also a bigger barrier for HE and FE (58% compared to 50%).
- The majority of HE and FE sector responses were at a non-managerial role (61%).
How the HE and FE sector interprets the report results
Quoted in the overall 2025 Attitudes survey report, Andrew Billington (pictured), Head of Learning Support, Edge Hill University says:
"The survey results point to some real and sustained progress in the sector, and our aim is to build on that to effectively and consistently meet the needs of disabled students. The Disabled Student Commitment is an important opportunity for the sector to engage with our students and shape our provisions together to meet the needs of disabled students.
It is encouraging to see the sustained elevation of confidence in colleagues understanding of digital accessibility. We need to build on this to collaboratively develop our organisational resources and understanding through the excellent communities of practice emerging in the sector.
The sector has made meaningful and consistent progress in developing our digital accessibility provisions in a complex and challenging landscape sector wide.
Working together to build our digital accessibility infrastructure, culture and practice will be key to the sector improving the lived experience of our students.”
Start small, think big
All respondents were asked to complete this sentence ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if…?’ to describe the best way of making accessibility improvements at their organisation.
Here are a selection of responses from the HE and FE sector:
- “People did more than just say how important accessibility was, and built it into their workstreams without needing to be told?”
- “Digital Accessibility minimum standards were everyone's starting point for training”
- “We could just start with the appointment of a single person dedicated to promoting digital accessibility improvements in the university. Start small, think big.”
As one respondent noted, 'Start small, think big' - it's a great way to approach making digital accessibility improvements. For help making your goals a reality in 2026, AbilityNet's experts can help you put a realistic plan in place: get in touch.
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