Your website might be breaking the law (and you don't know it)
If someone with a disability cannot use your website, that is not a design flaw. Under UK law, it is discrimination.
This is not a hypothetical
The Equality Act 2010 makes it illegal to discriminate against disabled people when providing goods, services, or facilities. Your website is a service. If it is not accessible, you are breaking the law. Not eventually. Not once you reach a certain size. Now.
Most business owners have never considered this. They think accessibility is something charities worry about. Or a government requirement for council websites. It is not. It is a legal obligation that applies to every business in the UK, regardless of turnover, headcount, or industry.
If someone with a visual impairment cannot read your text, or a motor disability prevents them from using your navigation, or a screen reader cannot make sense of your contact form, that is discrimination. They can file a complaint. And you will have to respond.
What the law actually says
The Equality Act 2010 requires businesses to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. Section 20 creates what is called an anticipatory duty. You must identify and remove barriers before a disabled person encounters them. Not after someone complains. Before.
Compensation for disability discrimination follows the Vento bands. The lower band starts at around £1,300. The middle band runs to £37,700. Serious cases can exceed £62,900. There is no statutory cap.
Since 28 June 2025, the European Accessibility Act applies too. If your business sells products or services to customers in the EU, your website must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards. Fines reach up to €20,000 per violation, with daily penalties of €1,000 until resolved. The EAA exempts microenterprises with fewer than ten employees and under €2 million turnover. The Equality Act has no such exemption. It applies to everyone.
The numbers are worse than you think
The WebAIM Million report analyses the top one million home pages every year for accessibility compliance. In February 2026, 95.9% of them had detectable WCAG failures. Not minor issues. Failures that prevent disabled people from using the website.
The average home page had 56.1 distinct accessibility errors. That number increased 10% in a single year, reversing six consecutive years of gradual improvement. Websites are getting more complex and accessibility is getting worse.
Nearly one in four people in the UK has a disability. That is over 16 million people. They have jobs. They search for local services. They spend money online. And the vast majority of the websites they visit are telling them, whether intentionally or not, that they are not welcome.
What accessibility actually means
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Level AA is the standard that both the Equality Act and the European Accessibility Act reference. It is not a vague aspiration. It is a specific, testable set of requirements.
In plain English, it means this. Can someone who is blind navigate your website using a screen reader? Can someone with low vision read your body text without zooming to 400%? Can someone who cannot use a mouse operate every button, link, and form with a keyboard alone? Can someone with epilepsy browse without being triggered by flashing or strobing content?
It also covers things you might not have considered. Colour contrast between your text and background. Descriptive alternatives for images. Labels on every form field. A logical heading structure that makes sense when read aloud. If any of these are missing, your website fails. Not on a technicality. On a fundamental requirement.
What your website probably gets wrong
The WebAIM Million report found the same failures across nearly every site tested. 83.9% of home pages had insufficient colour contrast. That subtle grey text on a white background that your designer chose because it looked clean? Someone with low vision cannot read it.
53.1% of pages had images with no alternative text. A screen reader hits those images and either skips them entirely or reads the file name out loud. "IMG_4782.jpg" does not tell anyone what they are looking at.
51% of pages had form inputs with no labels. Your contact form might look fine visually, but a screen reader user has no idea what to type into each field. No field name. No instructions. Just an empty box they cannot identify.
These are not edge cases. They are the three most common failures across one million websites. Every single one is a WCAG violation. And every single one is straightforward to fix if your website is built properly in the first place.
What compliance actually looks like
Heading structure chosen by document hierarchy, not visual size. H1 followed by H2 followed by H3. Screen readers use headings to navigate the same way sighted users scan a page. Get the structure wrong and the page becomes a wall of undifferentiated text.
Text contrast ratios of at least 4.5 to 1 for body copy and 3 to 1 for large text. If you have to squint, it fails. If your designer argues that high contrast "looks harsh," ask them whether their customers would rather squint or leave.
Alt text on every meaningful image. Not "photo" or "banner image." A description of what the image shows and why it is relevant. Decorative images get marked as decorative so screen readers skip them entirely.
Form labels linked to their inputs. Every field clearly states what information is needed. Keyboard navigation that works from top to bottom without trapping the user or hiding the focus indicator.
None of this is difficult to implement. But it has to be built in from the start. Bolting accessibility onto a finished website is like fitting a ramp to a building that was never designed for one. It works, but not well. The right approach is to build the ramp into the blueprint.
The bottom line
This is not a best practice conversation. The Equality Act 2010 is law. The European Accessibility Act adds further requirements if you serve EU customers. And 95.9% of website homepages have detectable WCAG failures. The question is not whether accessibility matters. The question is whether you are willing to keep ignoring a legal obligation now that you know about it.
The most common failures are not obscure technical issues. They are basic oversights: poor colour contrast on 83.9% of pages, missing alt text on 53.1%, unlabelled form fields on 51%. These are problems you can identify in an afternoon and fix in a week. There is no version of this where ignorance is a reasonable defence.
Sixteen million people in the UK have a disability. That is not a niche audience. That is roughly one in four of your potential customers. Building an accessible website is simultaneously the legal minimum, the commercially smart choice, and the decent thing to do. Start with a contrast check and an alt text audit. Do it this week.
How we can help
Every website we build is WCAG AA compliant from the start. Not retrofitted. Not bolted on. Baked in. Proper heading structure, sufficient colour contrast, keyboard navigation, descriptive link text, and alt text on every image. The things that make a website work for everyone.
We also handle schema markup, performance optimisation, and ongoing maintenance. If your current website has accessibility issues, we can audit it and tell you exactly what needs fixing. If it needs rebuilding, we will build it right.