Around one in four people in the UK live with a disability. Accessibility on your website is important for people with disabilities who use screen readers, for people who use keyboards to navigate, and for people who struggle to read your website because of poor color contrast. For businesses, it can be a problem for a large group of your potential customers, and can be a problem for your business. It is now a practical problem for businesses, and a legal problem for businesses.

1. What WCAG actually is

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are international guidelines to create websites, which are able to be used by people with disabilities. The four principles, which are the basis of the guidelines, are: content must be perceivable, content must be operable, content must be understandable and content must be robust. There are many levels of interpretation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The most up-to-date version is WCAG 2.2, which builds on top of the previous version, WCAG 2.1. Meeting the criteria for WCAG 2.2 therefore automatically means that the criteria for WCAG 2.1 have also been met.

2. What’s actually required, and what isn’t

A number of people believe that in the UK businesses are subject to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) under law. The reality is somewhat different. While there is no single technical standard written into UK law, there are however specific regulations relating to public sector websites. Under these specific regulations, public sector websites are required to meet the Level AA success criteria for WCAG 2.1. However, for businesses and organisations operating in the private sector, there is no specific law requiring adherence to WCAG (although it is treated as a de facto benchmark for what constitutes reasonable adjustment(s) for disabled people in line with the Equality Act 2010). In the EU, however, the European Accessibility Act will come into force in June 2025 and will oblige organisations and businesses operating online within that market to provide accessible services and goods for disabled people. Crucially, however, the European Accessibility Act will distinguish between organisations based on where their customers are located rather than where the organisation is itself based.

3. What Level AA actually covers

These 4 tests comprise Level A of the WCAG 2.1, the minimum amount of accessibility a website can provide, which should be the bare minimum that any website, accessible or not, strives to achieve. There are also tests at Level AA and Level AAA of the WCAG 2.1, each of which extend on the last and are used in increasing order of specificity. Most accessibility tests are aimed at achieving WCAG 2.1, Level AA and are suitable for a majority of websites, and more specifically, small business websites.

4. The common failures

Common Accessibility Failures for Small Business Websites – that don’t need to mean a re-build of your current website. Low-contrast text and images without appropriate alt-text for example are some of the most common errors found on websites. In addition to these, dropdown menus that don’t work with a keyboard and forms with vague or missing labels are further examples.

5. Overlay tools aren’t a shortcut

Most accessibility plugins and widgets work by placing a accessibility icon in the corner of web pages. This does not fix the underlying code, in most cases even creates problems and can even interfere with other assistive technologies that users themselves are using. They are not a substitute for designing and building accessible websites.

6. This isn’t a one-off fix

Accessibility is not a one-off activity that you do once and forget. Every page, image, and form that you add to a site after it has launched needs the same amount of attention as the original build. As time goes by, sites that started off being accessible can ‘drift’ and become inaccessible without anyone even realising.

If you are unsure as to whether your website is accessible or not, then it would be wise to begin by conducting a basic accessibility audit of your website. Accessibility audits need to be checked on an ongoing basis to ensure that your website is continuing to remain accessible. The above information will give you a general overview of what accessibility is and how it can be implemented on your website. However, as has been mentioned previously, accessibility is something that is affected by individual circumstances, therefore it would be wise to seek the advice of a professional.