There’s a version of the internet that you and I probably never see. No, we don’t mean the shady pages of the dark web. In fact, it’s not even really hidden; it’s just something we may not have needed to look for.
We go on websites because we need something. Information, to view something, to communicate with someone, or to purchase an item. So it can be really frustrating when the page doesn’t load, or the text is difficult to read, or the buttons or navigation don’t work. For 16.1 million people in the UK, this is how a large part of the internet looks. So why are so many websites still leaving some people behind?
The trouble is, accessibility has a bit of a PR problem – to some, the term feels like layers of compliance and extra work. But if you strip away the jargon, it comes down to whether potential customers, clients, or anyone who may need to use your website can actually use it. For the vast majority of UK-based sites, the answer is currently an overwhelming no. Morally, this should bother us. But also, economically, that is a lot of missed potential custom!
The numbers are worse than you think
In the most recent data, the WHO has estimated that 1.3 billion people live with a disability that affects how they use the internet. That’s an outstanding 16% of the entire planet. Do you still think this is a niche audience you can quietly deprioritise until “there’s more budget?” A sixth of everyone.
And yet the number of websites that are not compliant -even, shockingly, disability service websites- is also dramatically high. WebAIM’s latest scan found that a huge 95.9% of the top million websites had at least one accessibility failure. Those who have researched more of the web put the current percentage of genuinely accessible websites at somewhere between 2 and 4%. To put this into perspective, for every 100 websites you visit, maybe 2 or 3 will actually work for someone using a screen reader or keyboard-only navigation.
But there are also the in-between issues. The low-contrast websites that make text unreadable for some, the alt text that no one remembered to enter, or forms that assume everyone can see the asterisks needed to complete them. These may be small failures, but they pile up into something that essentially renders your website as a closed door to potential customers and audiences who sit within that 16%.
WCAG 2.2 Level AA: the standard behind accessible websites
WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; the technical rulebook which is maintained by the W3C. These guys oversee web standards in general. WCAG is not UK-specific and it is not something new. It is, in essence, the closest thing the internet has to an agreed answer for what ‘accessibility’ means in the online world.
There are four guiding principles to the guidelines, known as POUR. Content should be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable and Robust. Everything that WCAG tests will lead back to one of these four ideas, when used with actual assistive technology.
After that, there are three levels that a website can hit, growing in difficulty: A, AA, and AAA. Every website has one of these levels, with A covering the very bare minimum, rendering it unusable to some people. AAA, on the other hand, is the absolute gold standard, but is difficult to reach. AA is seen as the practical benchmark that all websites should aim for, as it is thorough enough to make a real difference, without being unachievable for most businesses.
AA is what public sector sites are legally required to hit. It’s the yardstick the Equality Act reaches for when someone asks whether reasonable adjustments were made, and it is the standard the EAA aligns with too.
What the law says about accessible websites (and what it doesn’t)
When looking at user statistics and drop-off rates, it becomes obvious why accessibility is an important consideration in website design: because of how it influences your traffic, not because it is a tick-box legal requirement. And this is where a lot of companies fall down, because UK law does not treat everyone the same, and there is a lot of room for interpretation. Unless you run a public sector website. For these the rules are to the point and largely unambiguous: The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 require WCAG 2.2 Level AA, a published accessibility statement, and a clear route for people to report problems. And someone will be regularly testing and reporting on it.
Private businesses live in murkier waters. There’s no law that names WCAG directly here. Instead, the Equality Act 2010 does the quiet, unglamorous work of holding things together. It requires anyone providing a service to the public to make reasonable adjustments so disabled people aren’t left at a substantial disadvantage. And yes, that extends to your website. The Act won’t tell you which technical standard to hit. However, if accessibility changes are needed, WCAG is nearly always the standard they mean.
So, you may not be legally obliged (yet) to hit the standards of WCAG 2.2 AA if you run a private business. But why would you not want to? Treating it as a mere legal loophole (and blocking potential customers in the process) is counterintuitive at best, and may leave you scrambling when the rules eventually change.
So, does my website need an accessibility statement?
If you’re in the public sector, then yes, it’s not optional. If you’re private, there’s currently no law forcing your hand. But we would argue you want one anyway. It costs you very little to write, and it tells anyone who lands on your site, disabled or not, that you’ve thought about this. That a human sits behind the website and that they are paying attention, ready to fix things when they’re flagged rather than pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
If it’s not a legal requirement, then why is accessibility important for my website?
For a start, because the European Accessibility Act is a lot closer than it looks. Brexit didn’t make it go away, it came into force in June 2025 and applies to any digital products or services that are offered to anyone living inside of the EU, regardless of where the company is located. If you sell to the EU audience: that may include you.
The pressure from the EAA isn’t stopping politely at the English Channel. While there’s no confirmed UK equivalent yet, there is evidence that things are moving in that direction. Enforcement under the Equality Act keeps growing every year, and people are more aware of their rights than they were five years ago. Building your site to WCAG 2.2 AA standards before there is a legal requirement is more than just getting ahead of the game; It’s reading the room correctly.
And yes, it is good for SEO too
Okay, so we probably should have led with this, being an SEO agency and all. We get it, we’re all running businesses here. But it’s worth saying plainly: this isn’t a growth hack you bolt onto accessibility work after the fact.
Search engines and screen readers are, in their own specific ways, reading your website for the same reasons. Both need to see a clean heading structure to make sense of what is actually appearing on the page. Both rely on alt text to tell them what an image is and what it is for. Both would absolutely benefit from reading ‘download our 2026 pricing guide’ rather than five links that say ‘click here.’ At its most basic, fixing a page so that a screen reader can make sense of it, and you’ll be handing Google what it wants anyway when it crawls your site.
It sounds so strikingly obvious, and it is not entirely coincidental. Search engines exist primarily to connect users with the content that they can use and which fits their queries. Accessible content is, by its very nature, more user-friendly. User-friendly content = better ranking. Better ranking = more visibility. Everyone wins, and you don’t have to exclude anyone.
How to make your website accessible
Look, we get it. Life gets busy, and if your website is bringing in customers, why alter it? Nobody is expecting you to rebuild your entire site overnight. But there are steps you can take to make it a bit more accessible without launching a grand six month project. Start small, with the most obvious offenders:
– Write real alt text for images that actually mean something, not just the filename typed twice or stuff with intended keywords.
– Make sure a keyboard alone can get someone through your entire site, no mouse required. Tabally can help with this, free of charge.
– Push your colour contrast up until text is genuinely readable, not just readable to you, on your monitor, in good light.
– Label form fields properly, so a screen reader user isn’t guessing what a blank box wants from them.
– Use headings that follow a logical order, the way you’d structure an essay rather than a mood board, especially if the page is information-heavy.
– Add captions to video, transcripts to audio.
– Test with actual assistive technology occasionally, because automated scanners can and do miss a lot of what’s actually wrong.
Really, most of this is about maintenance rather than a single project. Done correctly, it can help establish a process that will make creating accessible-friendly content second nature, that won’t need fixing after the fact.
Don’t forget mobile accessible websites
Understanding exactly why accessibility is an important consideration in website design becomes ever clearer when you look at mobile devices. Everything listed above relies on your audience browsing via a desktop, but there’s also a huge proportion of disabled users who search via their phone or tablet. If you’ve ever tried to use a non-responsive website on your mobile device, then you’ll have an inkling at how frustrating that can be. Now imagine that happening to nearly every other website you need to use. Even if they are fully mobile-friendly by design, they may not be accessible. Touch targets that are too small to differentiate, text that doesn’t reflow when zoomed in, voice control that gets lost after the fourth ‘learn more’ button: it all adds up.
Why Accessibility Is an Important Consideration in Website Design
Somewhere under all of this sits one plain question: can everyone who wants to use your website actually use it? Right now, for most UK websites, the honest answer is no. That’s worth fixing, not because a law might eventually force your hand, though it might, but because there are real people on the other end of that broken form field, giving up, closing the tab, and going somewhere else that bothered to get it right.
If you’re not sure where your site currently stands with accessibility, that can be a good place to begin. A decent starting point, and a free one, is the WAVE browser extension. It won’t catch everything, nothing automated does- but it’s a genuinely useful first pass. Then start small with the changes. Fix the worst of it first, the contrast, the alt text, the keyboard traps. The people who’ve been quietly struggling with your site will notice before Google does, but aren’t they the ones you want coming to your site anyway?