No UK law names a technical standard your website must meet, but the Equality Act 2010 expects it to work for disabled people and courts use WCAG 2.2 as the benchmark for whether it does. For years that felt theoretical. In 2026 it is not. Enforcement of the European Accessibility Act started across the EU last year, the first claims have been filed and the yearly WebAIM study shows most websites are getting worse, not better. Here is what actually applies to a UK business and what to fix first.
What does UK law actually say?
The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful for a business to discriminate against disabled people in providing goods and services, and your website counts as a service. The duty is to make reasonable adjustments, and it is anticipatory: you are expected to have thought about access before a disabled visitor arrives, not after a complaint.
The Act never mentions websites or WCAG by name. In practice, regulators and courts treat WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the measure of whether a site is accessible. A disabled visitor who cannot use your site can bring a claim in the County Court, and damages can include compensation for the distress caused.
Public sector bodies have it spelled out. Since 2018 their websites and apps have been legally required to meet WCAG at Level AA, currently version 2.2. If you supply the public sector, expect that requirement to flow down into contracts.
Does the European Accessibility Act catch UK businesses?
The EAA does not apply directly in the UK. The test is market access, not location. If EU residents can buy from your website, that part of your business is in scope, the same way GDPR reached UK sites years ago.
It has been in force since 28th June 2025 and enforcement is now real. The first claims were filed in France in late 2025, the Dutch regulator has been active against online retailers and a German retailer was fined €150,000 over accessibility failures in its checkout. A UK business selling into Europe should treat WCAG 2.2 AA on its shop and checkout as a requirement rather than a preference.
The six failures nearly every website has
Every year WebAIM tests the top one million homepages. The 2026 report found 95.9% failed automated WCAG checks, with an average of 56 errors per homepage. That is up on the year before. The web went backwards.
The failures are the same six every year: text without enough contrast (on 83.9% of homepages), images with no alt text, form fields with no label, links that say nothing useful, buttons with no name and pages that never declare their language. None of the six needs a specialist to find and none needs a rebuild to fix.
What is accessibility worth to a business?
The spending power of UK households with at least one disabled person, known as the purple pound, is put at around £274 billion a year, with online spending alone worth about £25 billion. A checkout that a screen reader user cannot finish is turning that money away, and they rarely complain first. They leave.
There is also a large overlap with SEO. Alt text, descriptive link text, proper headings and a declared page language are all things Google reads too. The fixes that help a screen reader tend to help your rankings, which is why accessibility work is part of monthly SEO done properly.
Seven fixes to make this month
1. Contrast. Run your brand colours through a contrast checker. Pale grey body text on white is the single most common failure on the web.
2. Alt text. Describe images that carry meaning. Purely decorative images get an empty alt attribute so screen readers skip them.
3. Form fields. Every field needs a name a screen reader can announce. A visible label, a hidden one or an aria-label all count. A placeholder on its own does not.
4. The keyboard test. Put the mouse away and tab through the site. Everything should be reachable, in a sensible order, with a visible outline showing where you are.
5. Link text. Links should say where they go. “View our pricing” works read out of context. “Click here” does not.
6. Page language. One attribute in the code tells assistive tech what language to read the page in. Missing on a huge share of sites, fixed in seconds.
7. Motion and media. Respect the reduced motion setting people choose on their devices, and give videos captions.
Where to start if this feels like a lot
Most sites do not need a rebuild. They need an audit and a short list of fixes, and the majority of that list comes from the same six failures above. An afternoon of work covers a lot of ground.
Accessibility is built into every site we design and build, and it is part of the monthly sweep on our care plans. If you want to know where your site stands, send it over and we will tell you straight what needs doing.
