Web Accessibility in 2026: What UK Businesses Still Get Wrong
Accessibility Is No Longer Optional
The conversation around web accessibility has shifted significantly over the past few years. What was once treated as a nice-to-have — something to address if budget and time allowed — is now a genuine legal and commercial concern. Yet the majority of UK business websites I review still fall short on the basics. This piece isn't about shaming anyone; it's about making the case that the cost of fixing accessibility issues is almost always lower than the cost of ignoring them.
What the Law Actually Requires
In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 already places a duty on businesses to make reasonable adjustments for disabled users — and websites are covered by this. Beyond that, public sector organisations have been subject to WCAG 2.1 AA compliance requirements for years. For private businesses, the practical exposure is lower, but the direction of travel is clear: accessibility is increasingly an expectation rather than an exception. If your site actively excludes users — through poor colour contrast, missing alt text, or forms that can't be navigated by keyboard — you are creating risk and losing customers.
The Most Common Failures I See
The issues that come up most often are rarely dramatic. They tend to be: images without descriptive alt text, meaning screen reader users get nothing or a raw filename; colour combinations that fail contrast ratio checks, making text unreadable for users with low vision; interactive elements — buttons, menus, forms — that can't be reached with a keyboard alone; and page structures that make no logical sense when CSS is stripped away. None of these require a full rebuild to fix. Most can be addressed incrementally with a focused audit and a few hours of development time.
The Business Case Isn't Just Legal
Roughly one in five people in the UK has some form of disability. That's a significant portion of any potential customer base. Beyond that, the techniques that improve accessibility — clear headings, descriptive labels, logical structure — also improve SEO. A site that works for screen readers tends to work better for search engine crawlers too. Fixing accessibility problems is rarely a cost-only exercise; it consistently improves usability for everyone.
Where to Start
If you're not sure where your site stands, a WCAG audit is a sensible first step. Tools like Axe or WAVE give you an automated baseline quickly, though they catch only about a third of real issues — the rest require manual testing. If you'd like me to carry out an audit on your site and produce a prioritised list of fixes with development estimates, that's something I offer as a standalone service. It's often quicker and cheaper than clients expect, and it leaves you with a clear picture rather than a vague obligation.
