Over 16 million people in the UK have a disability. If your website isn’t accessible, you’re excluding roughly 24% of the population — and potentially violating the Equality Act 2010.
What Web Accessibility Means
An accessible website works for everyone, regardless of how they interact with it. This includes people who use screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, voice controls, or who have visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments.
The Legal Position in the UK
The Equality Act 2010 requires businesses to make “reasonable adjustments” to ensure disabled people can access services — and that includes websites. While court cases against private businesses are still relatively rare, they’re increasing. Public sector organisations are already required to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018.
Key Accessibility Requirements
- Keyboard navigation: Every interactive element must be usable without a mouse.
- Alt text on images: Screen readers need text descriptions of images.
- Sufficient colour contrast: Text must be readable against its background (minimum 4.5:1 ratio).
- Focus indicators: Visible outlines showing which element is currently selected.
- Form labels: Every input field needs a properly associated label.
- Heading hierarchy: H1, H2, H3 in logical order — screen readers use these for navigation.
- Captions on video: Deaf or hard-of-hearing users need text alternatives.
- Reduced motion: Respect the prefers-reduced-motion setting for users who experience motion sickness.
The Business Case
Beyond compliance, accessible websites tend to have better SEO, faster load times, and higher conversion rates. The practices that make a site accessible — clean code, logical structure, good content hierarchy — are the same ones that help you rank on Google.
How We Build Accessible Sites
Every site we build includes keyboard navigation, ARIA attributes, focus-visible styling, proper heading hierarchy, image alt text, and prefers-reduced-motion support. Accessibility isn’t an add-on — it’s built into our development process from the start.