Does my website need to be accessible, legally?
Worth a look
As a UK business providing services to the public, you have a duty under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments so disabled people aren't put at a substantial disadvantage — and your website is part of the service you provide. It's a duty framed around reasonableness rather than a pass mark, which is both less frightening and less clear-cut than people expect.
What the law actually says, roughly
The Equality Act 2010 requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments. It does not name a technical standard, set a certification, or specify a score. What counts as reasonable depends on the size and resources of the business — a sole trader and a national retailer are not held to the same effort.
The separate, stricter regulations you may have read about — the 2018 accessibility regulations requiring WCAG 2.1 AA — apply to public sector bodies, not to private businesses. If you're a plumber or a dental practice, those aren't yours.
That said, WCAG is the standard everyone measures against in practice, because there isn't another one. Treating WCAG 2.1 AA as the target is the sensible interpretation of “reasonable”, not a legal requirement in itself.
This is a general explanation rather than legal advice — if you're worried about a specific claim, take proper advice.
The handful of things that matter most
Text that can be read — sufficient contrast between text and background, and text that stays legible when someone zooms. Low-contrast grey-on-white is the most common failure by a distance, and it's a design preference rather than a requirement.
Images that describe themselves — alternative text on anything meaningful, so a screen reader can say what it is. Decorative images should be marked as decorative rather than described.
Forms with real labels — a field whose only label is placeholder text inside it becomes unlabelled the moment someone starts typing, and is invisible to a screen reader.
Everything reachable by keyboard — some people don't use a mouse. If you can't tab through your menu and forms and see where you are, neither can they.
Video with captions, if you have video.
The commercial argument, which is the stronger one
Around one in five people in the UK has a disability, and a considerably larger share benefits from accessible design at some point — anyone using a phone in bright sunlight, anyone with a temporary injury, anyone whose eyesight has changed with age.
Nearly everything on the list above also helps everyone else: better contrast, clearer labels, sensible headings. It's rare to find a set of fixes that improves usability, search visibility and legal footing at once.
One thing to be sceptical of: overlay widgets that promise instant compliance from a line of JavaScript. They have a poor reputation among the disabled users they claim to help, and they have not reliably protected anyone from complaints.
How to check this yourself
- Try to use your own site without a mouse. Press Tab repeatedly from the top of the page — you should be able to reach every link, field and button, and always see which one you're on.
- Zoom the page to 200% (Ctrl and + a few times). Text should reflow and stay readable, not get cut off or overlap.
- Look at your greyest text against its background and ask honestly whether you'd read it comfortably in bright sunlight.
- Run the page through Google Lighthouse's accessibility audit — it's built into Chrome's developer tools and catches the mechanical issues, though it can't judge the human ones.
What to ask your web person
Copy this. It's phrased so you don't have to know the jargon to ask for the right thing.
Could you run an accessibility audit on our site and fix the mechanical items — colour contrast, missing alt text, unlabelled form fields and keyboard navigation? I'm not looking for a certificate, just to make sure we're making reasonable adjustments properly.
Want to know if this applies to your site?
This one is measured by Google's Lighthouse, which takes minutes rather than seconds — so it comes with the in-depth assessment rather than the free check-up. The free check-up still covers your security, your email protection and how search engines see you, in about a minute and with no account.