Accessibility has moved from "nice to have" to "you might get sued". The European Accessibility Act (June 2025), Equality Act 2010, and updated WCAG 2.2 standard now affect a lot of UK small businesses. Here's the plain-English version.
Who actually has to comply?
- All public sector bodies (mandatory, audited)
- Businesses providing e-commerce, banking, transport, or telecoms (covered by the EAA via Northern Ireland and trading partners)
- *Any* UK business under the Equality Act if a disabled user could reasonably claim discrimination
In practice: if you have a website with paying customers, you should be at WCAG 2.2 Level AA. It's also good business — around 16 million UK adults have a disability.
The 10 changes that cover 80% of WCAG 2.2
1. Colour contrast — body text needs 4.5:1 contrast against its background. Use the [WebAIM contrast checker](https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/).
2. Alt text on every meaningful image — describe what the image conveys, not "image of..."
3. Keyboard navigation — every interactive element reachable and usable with Tab/Enter
4. Visible focus indicators — when something is selected via keyboard, it must look selected
5. Form labels — every input field has a real, persistent label (not just placeholder text)
6. Semantic HTML — use proper headings (h1, h2, h3 in order), buttons for actions, links for navigation
7. Resizable text — content must work when zoomed to 200%
8. No information conveyed by colour alone — "fields in red are required" fails; add an icon or text
9. Captions on video content — auto-captions are now usually acceptable as a baseline
10. Skip-to-content link — at the top of every page for screen reader users
What it actually costs
For most small business sites, an accessibility audit + remediation is £600–£2,500. Ongoing compliance is mostly a content discipline, not a tech cost.
What I do for clients
Every site I build hits WCAG 2.2 AA by default — it's baked into the design system. If your existing site needs auditing, I run a full report and remediation plan you can either implement yourself or hand to a developer.
Accessibility is one of the few areas where doing the right thing and doing the smart business thing are genuinely the same decision.
