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This article explains why accessibility is a legal obligation, not just a good practice, and what your website must do to comply.
Introduction
Website accessibility is a legal obligation that many businesses overlook entirely. While most organisations are aware of the need for physical accessibility on their premises, the equivalent requirement for their digital presence receives far less attention. But the law is clear: websites and digital services must be accessible to people with disabilities. If a business doesn’t make sure that its services are accessible, it could face discrimination claims, damage to its reputation, and the loss of a large number of customers.
The primary legal framework governing website accessibility in the United Kingdom is the Equality Act 2010, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in the provision of goods, services, and facilities. Alongside this, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, known as WCAG, provide an internationally recognised technical standard for accessible web design. While WCAG is not itself a piece of legislation, it has become the de facto benchmark against which accessibility is measured, and courts and regulators increasingly reference it when assessing compliance.
This article explains the legal obligations, the practical standards your website must meet, and how to approach accessibility as an ongoing compliance commitment rather than a one-off technical exercise.
The Legal Framework: The Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act 2010 replaced and consolidated previous anti-discrimination legislation, including the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Under the Act, service providers have a duty not to discriminate against disabled persons in the provision of services. This includes a positive duty to make reasonable adjustments where a provision, criterion, or practice puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage compared to persons who are not disabled.
The duty to make reasonable adjustments is anticipatory. This means businesses cannot wait until a disabled person encounters a barrier and complains. They must take proactive steps to identify and remove barriers before they cause disadvantage. In the context of websites, this means designing and building sites that are accessible from the outset and regularly reviewing them to ensure they remain so.
The Act does not prescribe specific technical standards for websites. However, the concept of reasonable adjustment is inherently flexible, and what is considered reasonable will depend on the size and resources of the business, the nature of the service provided, and the cost and practicality of making the adjustment. For most businesses, ensuring compliance with WCAG 2.1 to Level AA is considered a reasonable adjustment and has become the expected standard.
Understanding WCAG
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are published by the World Wide Web Consortium, known as W3C, and provide detailed technical criteria for making web content accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities. The current version most commonly referenced is WCAG 2.1, though WCAG 2.2 was published in October 2023 and builds upon its predecessor.
WCAG is organised around four principles, often referred to by the acronym POUR: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Each principle contains specific guidelines, and each guideline has testable success criteria at three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA. Level AA is the generally accepted standard for legal compliance in the United Kingdom and across most jurisdictions internationally.
Perceivable
Content must be presented in ways that users can perceive. This includes providing text alternatives for non-text content, such as images; ensuring that video and audio content has captions and transcripts; ensuring sufficient colour contrast between text and background; and allowing content to be presented in different ways without losing information or structure. A common failing is the use of images without alt text, which renders them invisible to screen readers used by visually impaired users.
Operable
Users must be able to operate the interface. This means all functionality must be available via keyboard, as many users with motor disabilities cannot use a mouse. Users must have enough time to read and use content, and it must not be designed in a way that is known to cause seizures or physical reactions. Navigation must be consistent and predictable, and mechanisms must be provided to help users find content and determine where they are within the site.
Understandable
Information and the operation of the interface must be understandable. Text must be readable and comprehensible. Web pages must appear and operate in predictable ways. Users must be helped to avoid and correct mistakes, particularly in forms and interactive elements. Error messages should be clear and specific, and input fields should be labelled appropriately so that users know what information is required.
Robust
Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies. This means using valid, standards-compliant HTML, ensuring that custom components are properly coded with appropriate ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attributes, and testing with a range of assistive technologies to confirm compatibility.
Who Is Affected and Why It Matters
Disability encompasses a far broader range of conditions than many businesses appreciate. Visual impairments include not only blindness, but also low vision, colour blindness, and age-related visual decline. Hearing impairments range from complete deafness to partial hearing loss. Motor disabilities include conditions that affect the ability to use a mouse or touchscreen. Cognitive disabilities include dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, and conditions that affect memory and comprehension.
According to government statistics, approximately one in five people in the United Kingdom has some form of disability. The spending power of disabled consumers, often referred to as the purple pound, is estimated at over £270 billion annually. A website that excludes these users is not only legally non-compliant but also commercially disadvantaged. Research consistently shows that accessible websites perform better in search engine rankings, have lower bounce rates, and convert at higher rates across all user groups.
Public Sector Obligations
It is worth noting that public sector bodies in the United Kingdom are subject to additional, more prescriptive accessibility requirements under the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018. These regulations explicitly require compliance with WCAG 2.1 Level AA and mandate the publication of an accessibility statement. While these regulations do not apply directly to private sector businesses, they do signal the direction of regulatory expectations and provide a useful framework that many private sector organisations choose to adopt voluntarily.
Conducting an Accessibility Audit
The starting point for any accessibility compliance program is an audit of your current website. This should combine automated testing using tools that scan your website against WCAG criteria with manual testing by individuals who use assistive technologies. Automated tools can identify many common issues, such as missing alttext, insufficient colour contrast, and missing form labels, but they cannot assess the full user experience. Manual testing is essential to identify issues that automated tools miss, such as logical tab order, the meaningfulness of link text, and the usability of complex interactive elements.
The audit should result in a prioritised list of issues, grouped by severity. It is important to promptly address critical issues that hinder access to essential functionality. Less severe issues should be scheduled for remediation within a reasonable timeframe. The audit and its findings should be documented as evidence of your commitment to meeting your legal obligations.
The Accessibility Statement
While not strictly required for private sector websites, publishing an accessibility statement is strongly recommended. An accessibility statement demonstrates transparency and good faith. It should describe the level of accessibility your website aims to meet, identify any known limitations, explain what you are doing to address them, and provide contact details for users who encounter difficulties. This last point is particularly important: providing a clear route for users to report accessibility issues and request reasonable adjustments is a practical expression of your duty under the Equality Act.
Common Accessibility Failures
The most common accessibility failures we encounter include: images without alternative text; poor colour contrast, particularly on call-to-action buttons and links; forms without proper labels, making them unusable for screen reader users; content that can only be accessed using a mouse; videos without captions or transcripts; PDFs that are not tagged for accessibility; and pop-ups and modals that trap keyboard focus, preventing users from navigating away.
Once identified, fixing many of these issues is straightforward. The challenge is not the technical complexity of the solution but the awareness that the problem exists in the first place. Regular audits and a culture of accessibility within your organization are the most effective ways to prevent these issues from arising.
Conclusion
Website accessibility is both a legal obligation and a business opportunity. The Equality Act 2010 requires businesses to make reasonable adjustments to ensure their services are accessible to disabled individuals, and for most websites, meeting WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the accepted standard. Beyond legal compliance, an accessible website reaches a wider audience, performs better in search results, and demonstrates a commitment to inclusion that resonates with customers and stakeholders.
Accessibility is not a one-off project. Websites change, content is updated, and new features are added. Ongoing monitoring, regular audits, and a commitment to addressing issues promptly are essential to maintaining compliance and ensuring that your website remains accessible to everyone.
Need help with website compliance?
Lawdit Solicitors’ The StayLegal package helps ensure your website meets its legal obligations. Visit staylegal.co.uk or contact us at lawdit.co.uk to find out more.
Next in this series: Article 6 – Intellectual Property on Websites: Protecting and Respecting Copyright, Trademarks, and Images
