- Updated April 2026
What is website accessibility? It feels like it hasn’t yet quite gone mainstream when it comes to web considerations and specialisms, certainly not in the same way discussions about SEO have.
Yet it’s enormously important, both in and of itself, as well as an element which contributes to good SEO and user experience.
It’s an ever evolving field, which can come across as very technical, but you don’t need to understand how each adjustment should be made to benefit from having an overall understanding and awareness of the importance of this subject. Having such an understanding will help you ask the right questions of your own website to the benefit of your customers, clients, prospects and business as a whole.
Before we share a brief history and cover the current state of legislation, exactly what is website accessibility – what do we mean by it?
Like physical accessibility website accessibility means designing and building digital experiences so that disabled people are not shut out by avoidable barriers.
In the same way that there are certain adjustments that are sometimes required to make physical places accessible; there are particular features or issues with websites, either in design or functionality that, if unaddressed, can make a website inaccessible.
For example, not providing alternative text ‘alt text’ on images, or bad keyboard accessibility. Not everyone uses a mouse for instance, so can they navigate it with a keyboard?
For some organisations, there are specific legal requirements to meet. For others, the obligations are less prescriptive, but the need is still there. If your website is part of how people access your service, buy from you, contact you or understand what you do, accessibility matters.
Website accessibility: how we got here
Back in the day (pre 2000)
Pre 2000, before the days of Facebook and when Google was only a baby, there was little by way of formal guidelines for website accessibility or legislation that had to be abided by.
In 1998 however, two lawsuits were filed against two big names in the US – Taco Bell and Blockbuster – for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by having inaccessible websites. Neither case went to court, but they helped raise awareness of the need for accessible websites and laid the groundwork for future legal action.
The days of formal guidance (post 2000)
In 2002, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 were released by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WCAG 1.0 consisted of 14 guidelines that covered a range of accessibility issues like content structure, navigation, and multimedia captions and audio descriptions. These guidelines formed the basis for WCAG 2.0, which was released in 2008 and is still widely used.
In 2010, WCAG 2.0 was updated with a new set of guidelines known as WCAG 2.1. WCAG 2.1 includes four new success criteria that cover issues like low vision , lack of color perception, and limited mobility. In 2018, WCAG 2.1 became an official W3C Recommendation, which means that it is now recognised as an international standard for web accessibility.
The situation now
In the UK, the accessibility regulations came into force for public sector bodies on 23 September 2018. Under these regulations a website (this includes an intranet), or mobile app must be made accessible by making it ‘perceivable, operable, understandable and robust’. There is also a need for an accessibility statement on the website that explains how accessible the service is, where there are known issues, and how users can report problems or request information in an alternative format.
This applies to local and central government organisations as well as some charities (if financed by public funding, provide services that are essential to the public or aimed at disabled people).
Schools though are mainly exempt, except for the content people need to be able to access in order to access the service being provided.
The full name of the accessibility regulations is the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. And they build on existing obligations to people who have a disability under the Equality Act 2010 (or the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 in Northern Ireland).
One important update in recent years is WCAG 2.2 AA is now the minimum standard for public sector websites and apps, with monitoring against WCAG 2.2 AA having started from October 2024.
There are still limited situations in which full compliance may not be required, such as where fixing a particular issue would amount to a disproportionate burden. But that is not a blanket opt-out. Organisations are expected to assess that position properly, document it, and continue improving accessibility where they reasonably can.
How well have organisations been complying?
The latest government monitoring report, published in December 2024 and covering the period from January 2022 to September 2024, says that the Government Digital Service monitored 1,203 public sector websites and 21 mobile apps.
Accessibility issues of varying degrees were found on nearly all the websites and apps tested, with the most common problems including colour contrast, visible focus and keyboard accessibility. However, positively the report also states that in 68% of completed cases organisations had fixed the issues found in the time period allowed, or had a short-term plan to fix remaining issues.
And what about private sector organisations?
If your business operates in the private sector then it doesn’t fall under the public sector accessibility regulations in the same way. You should be aware though that under the Equality Act 2010, service providers must make reasonable adjustments so disabled people are not placed at a substantial disadvantage.
Legislation aside an inaccessible website means the experience for your visitors will not be seamless, to a greater or lesser degree there will be some friction. For example your website might be inadvertantly blocking people fro completing enquiries, purchases, bookings, applications or donations. It can undermine trust. And it can leave organisations looking careless in precisely the places where they are trying hardest to appear credible.
What’s coming up next?
Well, for now and the next few years WCAG 2.2 is here to stay. This is the current version organisations should be working to, and there is no sign of a replacement arriving any time soon. That’s not to say the standards aren’t going to continue to evolve. WCAG 3 is in development, but it is still a draft and the W3C says it is still a few years away. Crucially, when it does arrive, it will not suddenly make WCAG 2.2 irrelevant overnight – there won’t be an instant like for like swap. So, for the time being, the sensible thing to do is to treat WCAG 2.2 AA as the standard to meet, while being aware there will be an evolution.
To understand more about the current accessibility level of your own website please book in a review.