A standards organisation called the World Wide Web Consortium (aka W3C) introduced website accessibility guidelines in 1999 to help website creators make their websites easy to navigate for users who experience disabilities. Since then, these guidelines have expanded and become much more than just adding alt tags to images so that screen readers can dictate what the image portrays for those who can’t see it. Not just that, but it’s also becoming mandatory for websites to be compliant to new, more comprehensive, standards.
The term ‘web accessibility’ means that websites, online tools and technologies can be used by people with disabilities. The latter include auditory, neurological, cognitive, physical, visual and speech disabilities. Examples of this include deafness, blindness and permanent immobility.
An extension of this is ‘non-disability-based accessibility’ which benefits those using mobile devices, the ageing population with changing abilities, those with temporary disabilities (e.g. those who have lost their glasses or have broken their arm), and those with situational limitations (e.g. sitting in an environment where they can’t listen to audio content).
If you or the company you work for have a website, then it affects you because your website needs to abide by certain accessibility guidelines. More specifically, WCAG (“Web Content Accessibility Guidelines”) provide the technology-specific principles, standards and recommendations to make content more accessible for those with disabilities to be able to access online content.
The principles are simple enough – your website needs to be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust.
The standards are also quite simple, but they’re quite lengthy. The WCAG checklist has over 70 success criteria broken into three conformance levels (A, AA and AAA). You can find the full checklist here (don’t forget to call us when you’re finished reading and panic about who can help you implement them all). The conformance levels are outlined below.
Level A: The minimum conformance required that addresses the most critical of accessibility barriers
Level AA: The mid-range conformance required that addresses level A requirements along with additional items met to address a broader range of accessibility needs
Level AAA: The strictest level of conformance encompassing both levels A and AA with the most detailed criteria incorporated to maximise the incorporation of accessibility standards
The short answer is, yes. Everyone needs to comply. Something that caught a lot of people by surprise was that from 28 June 2025, compliance is required – and with the WCAG guidelines being as comprehensive as they are, the surprise is always nothing short of ‘how on earth could one tick all these boxes?’. Well, we told those who asked that it’s just a case of us conducting an audit, then having a (sometimes very long) checklist of recommended solutions (enter calm-mode that there’s a plan of action available).
Depending on which country your business operates in, there either is or will be a law already in effect (apart from the WCAG guidelines) that would require you to have accessibility measures in place which has its own non-compliance consequences. For example, in Canada, The Accessible Canada Act (Bill C-81) states that WCAG Level AA must be in place or have a fine of up to $250,000 imposed. In Europe, EU Web Accessibility Directive (for public sector bodies) and the European Accessibility Act (for manufacturers and providers who sell products and services across European borders) are a bit more complicated in that the penalties rely on national laws to generate specific penalties but they do state in Article 30(2) that “The penalties provided for shall be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Those penalties shall also be accompanied by effective remedial action in case of non-compliance of the economic operator.”.
In some cases, though, the law is unclear regarding exact details as is the case within South African legislation. In South Africa, digital inclusivity is addressed by the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPDA) which was designed to promote, monitor and protect the rights of persons with disabilities. It does not, however, explicitly reference websites though it does include reference to the digital realm and that digital content should be accessible to all which leads them to require turning to WCAG as the framework for accessibility principles to be incorporated. This is evidenced by the South African governmental communications department specifically referencing that government departments need to “... conform to at least Level A of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.”
Long story short, whether you’re reading this before or after 28 June 2025 and you’ve not yet addressed your website’s compliance to accessibility standards, you need to get moving.
