Website Accessibility and WCAG 2.2 Explained

What WCAG is

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are published by the W3C. They are organised under four principles: content must be perceivable, operable and understandable, and must work reliably with assistive technologies such as screen readers. Each guideline has testable success criteria at three levels: A (minimum), AA (the usual target) and AAA (enhanced). The current version, WCAG 2.2, became a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023.

What is new in WCAG 2.2

According to the W3C, WCAG 2.2 added nine success criteria and removed 4.1.1 Parsing as obsolete. The ones at levels A and AA, which most sites should meet, are:

• 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum), AA. Sticky headers, cookie banners and chat widgets must not completely hide the item a keyboard user is on.
• 2.5.7 Dragging Movements, AA. Anything done by dragging, such as a slider, must also work with simple taps or clicks.
• 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum), AA. Tap targets at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or spaced so they do not overlap.
• 3.2.6 Consistent Help, A. Help options such as phone number or contact link appear in the same place on each page.
• 3.3.7 Redundant Entry, A. Do not make people type the same information twice in one process.
• 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum), AA. Logins must not rely on memory puzzles; allow paste and password managers.

The law in the UK

Public sector bodies must meet the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018. GOV.UK guidance says their content needs to meet WCAG 2.2 level AA, and they must publish an accessibility statement. Private businesses are not covered by those regulations, but the Equality Act 2010 requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and a website is often how you provide your service. WCAG 2.2 AA is the benchmark most people use to show they have taken that seriously.

There is also a commercial case. The DWP's Family Resources Survey reported that one in four people in the UK were disabled in 2023 to 2024. Many more have temporary injuries, older eyes or a cracked phone screen in bright sunlight.

Quick checks you can do yourself

• Keyboard. Press Tab through your home page. Can you reach every link, menu and button, and always see where you are?
• Zoom. Zoom the browser to 200%. Does the text reflow without sideways scrolling?
• Contrast. Grey text on white often fails. AA requires 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
• Images. Do meaningful images have alt text that describes their purpose? Decorative images should have empty alt.
• Forms. Does every field have a visible label, and do error messages say what is wrong?
• Headings. One H1 per page and a logical order of H2s and H3s.
• Links. Avoid "click here"; link text should make sense on its own.

Free tools such as WAVE and Lighthouse catch some issues automatically, but not all. Screen reader testing with NVDA or VoiceOver finds what tools miss.

Fix the basics first. Most real-world barriers on small business sites come from a handful of issues: low-contrast text, missing form labels, images without alt text, links that say only "read more", and menus that cannot be used with a keyboard.

Building it in costs less than fixing it later

Accessibility is cheapest when it is part of the design: colour palettes chosen for contrast, components built with semantic HTML and proper focus styles, forms labelled from the start. Retrofitting an inaccessible theme or page builder can mean rebuilding large parts of it. If your current site fails basic checks, read redesign or start again.

When to call us

Every site we build follows WCAG 2.2 AA practices as standard; see accessible web design. If you want an existing site reviewed, we can check it against the key criteria and fix issues at £45 an hour + VAT. Get in touch or call 01623 650333.

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