Making your website available to as many people as possible seems a no brainer, as more people can view it, the more exposure you yield in return. New websites should be coded with accessibility in mind, but what about existing websites, created with no thought for accessibility?

Making an existing website accessible can be a quick or cumbersome project, depending on the coding behind the website and the level of accessibility you want to achieve.

Let’s begin however with some background info;

Legally, does a website have to be accessible?

The Equality Act 2010 talks about the accessibility of web sites, specifically around the prevention of inequality. Websites should make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure their website is accessible to people with disabilities.

I tried to find examples of where this has been enforced but as at time of writing, it appears that this has not yet been enforced in a court of law.

So legally yes, you have to make your website accessible, but if you choose not to, it’s unlikely anything will happen. Except for missing out on visitors and damaging brand reputation.

What level of accessibility do I need to achieve?

There are three main levels of accessibility according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), A, AA and AAA.

A is the most basic and simplest to achieve, going up to AAA which considers many areas of accessibility. Level A features 25 criteria to achieve, Level AA adds a further 13 criteria with Level AA needing 23 more criteria.

The UK Government has adopted the WCAG 2.1 level AA as a suitable standard for public sector sites and this is the standard we recommend. It’s a perfect compromise of the two, covering the majority of items a typical user would encounter.

Can you help us become accessible?

Of course, we offer an accessibility package that will test your website for accessibility, fix any issues found and produce an accessibility statement for your website. An accessibility statement is only legally required in the public sector but is regarded as best practice for private companies.

As always with our pricing structure, every project is unique and requires a different amount of time investment. Each project is costed individually to ensure that you only pay for what you need and to guarantee fair pricing. For example, a council website with thousands of pages is likely to require many more hours to make accessible than a small 5 page bakery website.

Contact us to chat about making your website accessible or even redesigning your website with accessibility built straight in.