Website Accessibility: What the Law Requires and Why It Pays Off
Website accessibility was long treated as charity: something you do if budget is left over. That has changed from two directions. On one side, the European Accessibility Act has come into force in the European Union and requirements for digital products have become mandatory for a wide range of companies. On the other, it turns out an accessible site is easier for everyone to use, not only for people with disabilities.
One caveat up front: the exact scope of your obligations depends on country, company size and type of activity, and exemptions exist for micro-enterprises. Check your own position with a lawyer rather than with a blog article. What follows is the technical part, which does not depend on jurisdiction.
What accessibility means in practice
It is the ability to use a site when something is not working the way it does for a typical visitor. The causes can be permanent or temporary, and the temporary ones are far more common:
- Someone with weak eyesight zooms the text to 200%.
- A commuter has muted the sound and is reading subtitles.
- Someone is using the keyboard because their mouse broke.
- Someone with a temporary arm injury is working one-handed.
- Someone opens the site in bright sunlight, where low contrast is simply invisible.
The last point illustrates the principle well: light grey text on white is not an inclusion issue, it is the reason half your mobile visitors outdoors cannot read anything.
The four principles everything rests on
| Principle | What it means | Typical violation |
|---|---|---|
| Perceivable | Content can be obtained in more than one way | Images without alt, video without captions |
| Operable | Everything works without a mouse | A menu that only opens on hover |
| Understandable | Behaviour is predictable, errors are explained | A form saying “error” without naming the field |
| Robust | Works with assistive technology | Buttons built from divs with no role |
What to check in an hour
These checks require no tools and surface most problems.
Walk the site with the Tab key
Without touching the mouse, move through the homepage from top to bottom. Watch for: whether you can see which element has focus; whether every link and button is reachable; whether focus falls into invisible elements; whether a modal closes with Esc.
This is the fastest way to find problems. If you cannot tell where you are, the focus outline has been removed by styling, and that is the single most common mistake.
Zoom to 200%
The layout must not break, text must not be clipped, horizontal scrolling must not appear.
Check contrast
Body text must differ from the background strongly enough. The standard is 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large. Light grey on white, and white over a light photo, both fail.
Disable images
The page should remain comprehensible. If you get blank spaces with no captions, alt text is missing.
Submit a form with errors
The message must state which field is wrong and why. “Please complete the form correctly” does not qualify.
Why it pays off beyond compliance
- It is the same work as SEO. Image alt text, heading structure, meaningful link text, semantic markup. A crawler and a screen reader parse a page in similar ways.
- A wider audience. People with visual, hearing and motor impairments are a substantial share of the population, and it grows as the audience ages.
- Fewer support requests. Clear form errors remove an entire class of questions.
- Better on mobile. Large tap targets, contrast and keyboard operability improve the experience for everyone, not only for those without a mouse.
- Eligibility for tenders. Public and corporate procurement increasingly includes accessibility requirements.
The most common mistakes
| Mistake | Why it is bad | The right approach |
|---|---|---|
| Focus outline removed | No way to tell where you are on the page | Replace with your own style, do not delete |
| A button built from a div | Does not work with keyboard or screen readers | Use button and a elements |
| Link text reading “more” | Means nothing out of context | “More about delivery” |
| Alt text on every decorative icon | Noise that makes the page harder to listen to | Empty alt for decorative images |
| Colour as the only signal | Not everyone distinguishes shades | Colour plus an icon or label |
| A one-button overlay plugin | Does not fix the cause, sometimes interferes | Fix the markup |
The last row deserves a separate mention. Widgets promising to make a site accessible with one button do not replace proper markup and in some cases conflict with the assistive technology people actually use.
Where to start
Not with a hundred-page audit. Take three key journeys: the homepage, a service page, the contact form. Walk each with the keyboard, check contrast and alt text, fix what you find. That closes the majority of real barriers.
Accessibility is not a separate project with its own budget. It is a set of habits during build that cost almost nothing when applied from the start, and cost noticeably when retrofitted. Which is why the cheapest moment to address it is before the designs are drawn.
