Website accessibility and UK law: what a small business needs to know

What the law actually says

In the UK, the relevant law for a private business is the Equality Act 2010. It requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people are not put at a substantial disadvantage compared with everyone else. It does not name websites specifically, and it does not name a technical standard — but a website is how most businesses now provide their service, and it has been widely understood to fall within scope.

'Reasonable' is doing real work in that sentence. What is reasonable for a national retailer is not what is reasonable for a two-person firm, and the Act is proportionate by design. That is the basis for not panicking. It is not a basis for doing nothing, because some adjustments are cheap enough that declining to make them is difficult to call reasonable.

Separately, the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 apply to public sector organisations and set a hard requirement to meet WCAG 2.1 AA and publish an accessibility statement. If you are a private business those regulations do not apply to you — but the standard they name is the one everybody has settled on, which is why it is worth working to anyway.

What WCAG 2.1 AA asks for, in practice

The full standard is long. The parts that account for most real-world problems on a small business website are few, and none of them require a redesign.

Text you can read

Text needs to contrast enough with its background — a ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal-sized text. Pale grey on white looks refined on a designer's monitor and disappears for anyone with reduced vision, or anybody reading on a phone in daylight.

Images that describe themselves

Every image that carries meaning needs alt text saying what it shows. Decorative images should have empty alt text so screen readers skip them rather than reading out a filename.

Form fields with labels

A field needs a real label, not just placeholder text — placeholder text vanishes the moment somebody starts typing, taking the only instruction with it.

Buttons and links that say what they do

A button containing only an icon is announced as 'button'. A link reading 'click here' is announced as 'click here'. Neither tells somebody navigating by links what they will get.

Headings in order

Headings are how screen reader users skim a page. When they are chosen for their size rather than their level, that structure stops working.

Keyboard access

Everything clickable should be reachable with the Tab key, and the currently focused element should be visibly outlined. Removing that outline because it looked untidy is one of the most common accessibility faults on the web.

The limit of automated testing, stated honestly

Automated accessibility testing catches roughly a third of accessibility problems. That figure is well established and it is the most important thing on this page, because it is routinely left out by tools that would rather sell you a green tick.

What automation is good at is the mechanical and countable: contrast ratios, missing alt attributes, unlabelled fields, heading levels. What it cannot judge is whether alt text is any good, whether the page makes sense read aloud in order, whether an error message explains what to do, or whether somebody using only a keyboard can actually complete your booking form.

So a clean automated pass is not a statement that your site is accessible. It means the mechanical faults are gone, which is genuinely worth having and is where to start. Anybody selling you a certificate of compliance on the strength of an automated scan is selling you something they cannot deliver.

Where to start if you are starting from nothing

Fix contrast first. It is the most common fault, it affects the most people including many who would never describe themselves as disabled, and it is usually a handful of colour values in one stylesheet.

Then alt text on images that carry meaning, then labels on form fields — particularly on whatever form makes you money. Then put the keyboard focus outline back if somebody removed it.

After that, the highest-value thing you can do is not a scan at all. Try to complete your own contact or booking form using only the Tab key and the Enter key, without touching the mouse. Ten minutes of that will tell you more than any tool, including this one.

The checks behind this guide

• Text is readable against its backgroundText has to stand out enough from what is behind it to be readable. Pale grey on white looks refined on a designer's monitor and disappears for anyone with reduced vision, or simply reading on a phone in daylight. It is one of the most common reasons people give up on a page, and one of the easiest to fix.
• Images have descriptions for screen readersSomeone using a screen reader hears nothing where these images are. If any of them are product photos, logos or buttons, that part of the page simply does not exist for them.
• Form fields are labelledA form field without a label gives a screen reader user no indication of what to type into it. Placeholder text is not a substitute — it vanishes the moment somebody starts typing. On a contact or checkout form this is the difference between an enquiry and a visitor who leaves.
• Buttons have readable labelsA button with no readable label is announced to a screen reader as nothing more than 'button'. This usually happens when the button contains only an icon. If the unlabelled one is a menu toggle or an Add to Basket, the site becomes unusable rather than merely awkward.
• Links have readable textA screen reader announces these as just "link", with nothing to say where they go. Icon-only links, such as social media buttons, are the usual cause.
• Headings run in orderScreen reader users navigate by jumping between headings. When levels are skipped, that outline stops matching the page and becomes confusing to move through.