Multi-year accessibility plan in France (RGAA): duration, content, annual action plan and publication

What is the multi-year accessibility plan in France?

The official RGAA page states that the multi-year plan is drawn up pursuant to paragraph III of Article 47 and that it sets out the digital accessibility policy of the entity concerned. It is not limited to a list of technical fixes: it also presents the entity's strategy, organisation and resources, as well as the work to bring its online services into compliance.

Its duration is three years at most. Among the work it presents is, in particular, the review of the annual action plans.

The official page describes two main parts: on the one hand the entity's policy and organisation, on the other the work to bring its online public communication services into compliance. The following sections cover each part.

Part 1: the entity's policy and organisation

The first part describes how the entity organises itself to meet its obligations. According to the official RGAA page, the plan contains information on:

• how digital accessibility is taken into account in the entity's digital strategy and in its policy for the inclusion of people with disabilities;
• the functional position and duties of the entity's digital accessibility officer;
• the human and financial resources allocated to digital accessibility;
• how the required skills or knowledge are reflected in job descriptions and recruitment processes;
• staff training and awareness-raising actions;
• any use of external resources and expertise, as well as the technical means and tooling used to manage and test digital accessibility;
• the internal organisation for meeting the accessibility obligations of online services, including how digital services are checked and how user requests are handled;
• the inclusion of accessibility in contract clauses (calls for tenders and quotes), in supplier scoring and selection criteria, in acceptance procedures and, where applicable, in agreements with operators, delegatees or partners.

Part 2: bringing online services into compliance

The second part concerns the entity's online public communication services. The official page specifies that the plan presents, in particular:

• how digital accessibility is taken into account in new projects;
• how people with disabilities are taken into account in user testing;
• the compliance evaluations (or audits) planned for all communication services;
• the corrective measures planned for non-accessible content, with an implementation timetable that takes into account the priority of the most visited content and the most used services;
• non-mandatory accessibility measures, for example access to audio and video content in sign language, translating some content into plain language, or any other measure that takes into account AAA-level criteria of the international standards, listed in the annex of the reference standard;
• the review of the annual action plans.

The annual action plan that accompanies the multi-year plan

The multi-year plan sets the framework over several years; the action plan makes it operational year by year. The official page is clear: compliance work and actions in favour of digital accessibility are planned annually in action plans.

Our advice for a useful annual plan: take the commitments of the multi-year plan and turn them into concrete actions for the year, such as compliance evaluations to carry out, corrective measures to implement, staff training and awareness sessions, or accessibility clauses to add to upcoming calls for tenders. The timetable of corrective measures presented in the multi-year plan takes into account the priority of the most visited content and the most used services; it makes sense to apply the same logic in the annual plan.

The review of these annual plans is one of the items the multi-year plan presents. Our advice: keep this review up to date action by action rather than reconstructing it afterwards.

Where to publish the multi-year plan and the action plan

The official page sets three publication requirements. First, the multi-year plan and the action plan for the current year are available online on the entity's website. Second, links to these documents appear in the accessibility statement of the online public communication services that depend on the entity. Third, they are published in an accessible format.

That last point deserves attention. Our advice: make sure the document can be read with assistive technology and, if you publish it as a downloadable file, check its accessibility just as you would a web page.

Finally, remember to update the link in each accessibility statement when the action plan moves to a new year, since it is the current year's plan that must be available online.

Should you wait for RGAA 5 before writing your plan?

No. The official page notes that version 5 of the RGAA is being drafted, with publication planned for the end of 2026, and states that this does not call into question the relevance of current or future accessibility work: it must under no circumstances be suspended or postponed.

In our view, the plan and action plan that organise this work therefore do not need to wait for RGAA 5. To document the section on technical means and tooling for testing accessibility, you can run a free test of your pages with Conformly and then set up continuous monitoring. Our advice: treat an automated test as a complement to, not a substitute for, the compliance evaluations (or audits) that the plan presents for all communication services.

Frequently asked questions

Further reading on Conformly

• French accessibility statement template
• Understanding the RGAA standard
• Continuous RGAA compliance monitoring

Sources

This article relies on the official sources listed at the end of the page.

• DINUM — Schéma pluriannuel