WCAG 2.2 in Plain English: Making Your Site Legally Accessible

What WCAG 2.2 is and the level to aim for

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are the international standard for making websites usable by people with disabilities: visual, auditory, motor and cognitive. Version 2.2, published by the W3C in late 2023, is the current benchmark and the one UK public-sector monitoring now tests against. Each requirement, called a success criterion, sits at one of three levels: A (essential), AA (the standard everyone means by 'accessible') and AAA (gold-plating that few sites fully achieve).

For a small business, the target is Level AA. It is what regulators reference, what accessibility statements are written against, and what disability advocates cite in complaints. The good news: a well-built modern site already meets much of it, and most failures cluster around a handful of repeat offenders such as poor colour contrast, missing image descriptions and forms that fight keyboard users.

The legal picture for UK businesses

The Equality Act 2010 requires service providers, which includes anyone selling or offering services through a website, to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. The duty is anticipatory: you are expected to have thought about access before a disabled customer struggles, not after. Very few website cases reach a UK courtroom because claims tend to settle quietly, but the exposure is real, and WCAG AA is the yardstick any adviser will measure you against.

Two more regimes matter. Public-sector bodies have been bound by specific accessibility regulations since 2018, so if you build or supply digital services to councils, the NHS or universities, WCAG compliance is contractual. And since June 2025 the European Accessibility Act applies to businesses selling to consumers in the EU, explicitly covering ecommerce. Brexit does not exempt a West Bromwich shop that ships to Dublin; if EU consumers can buy from your site, the EAA is part of your compliance picture, with only the smallest microenterprises carved out.

Low-effort fixes: an afternoon's work

Start where the effort is smallest and the impact largest. These fixes need no redesign and clear a surprising number of AA criteria.

• Write alt text for every meaningful image, describing what it shows; mark purely decorative images with empty alt attributes so screen readers skip them.
• Fix colour contrast: normal text needs a ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, large text 3:1. WebAIM's free contrast checker gives an instant pass or fail.
• Give every form field a proper visible label, not just placeholder text that vanishes when typing starts.
• Rewrite vague links: 'read our pricing guide' works for screen-reader users navigating by links; 'click here' does not.
• Give every page a unique, descriptive title and set the lang attribute to "en-GB" so assistive technology pronounces content correctly.
• Check nothing conveys meaning by colour alone, such as errors shown only in red with no icon or text.

Medium effort: keyboard, forms and structure

The next tier takes a developer a day or two on a typical brochure site. Put the mouse away and use only Tab, Shift+Tab and Enter: you should be able to reach and operate every menu, button and form, always able to see which element has focus. If the focus outline has been styled away, restore it; if focus disappears behind a sticky header or cookie banner, that now fails a criterion added in 2.2.

Forms deserve particular care because they are where accessibility failures cost you money. Error messages must say what went wrong and how to fix it, in text, next to the field. Heading structure should be logical (one h1, then h2s and h3s in order) because screen-reader users navigate by headings the way sighted users skim. Add a skip link so keyboard users can jump past the navigation, and make sure the site still works at 200% browser zoom without horizontal scrolling.

What is actually new in 2.2

If your site already met the previous version, these are the additions to check, translated from standardese.

• Focus not obscured: the keyboard focus indicator must never be completely hidden behind sticky headers, chat bubbles or cookie banners.
• Target size: clickable targets need to be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or have enough spacing that neighbouring targets are not mis-tapped. Cramped icon rows and tightly packed footer links are the usual failures.
• Dragging movements: anything operated by dragging, such as sliders and reorderable lists, needs a simple click or tap alternative.
• Consistent help: contact details, live chat or help links should sit in the same place on every page.
• Redundant entry: do not force people to re-type information they already gave earlier in the same process, a common checkout sin.
• Accessible authentication: logging in must not depend on memorising or transcribing; allow pasting into password fields and support password managers rather than blocking them.

One criterion, the old parsing rule, was removed entirely, so validator errors about it can be ignored.

How to test without an audit budget

Free tooling catches a large share of problems. Run the WAVE browser extension and axe DevTools on your key pages: home, contact, a service page and any checkout or booking flow. Lighthouse in Chrome gives an accessibility score alongside performance. Then do the two manual checks no tool replaces: navigate the whole site by keyboard, and listen to a page with a screen reader (VoiceOver is built into every Mac and iPhone; NVDA is free on Windows).

• Automated scan of key pages with WAVE or axe, fixing errors first and warnings second.
• Full keyboard walk-through of every user journey, including forms and menus.
• Contrast check of brand colours, recording the passing combinations for future designers.
• A short accessibility statement page saying what you meet and how to report problems.

Treat it as maintenance rather than a one-off project: retest whenever the design changes. Accessible sites also tend to rank better and convert better, because the same clarity helps everyone. If you want a structured audit and a prioritised fix list, our team can provide one.