Accessibility is now a legal floor, not a nice-to-have: the European Accessibility Act has applied to private-sector digital services since June 2025.
Web accessibility means people with visual, motor, auditory, and cognitive disabilities can actually use your site. The measuring stick is WCAG 2.2 — Level AA is the target regulators and courts reference — and the stakes changed in June 2025 when the European Accessibility Act began applying to private-sector e-commerce and services in the EU, joining the ADA in the US. WCAG 3 remains a draft; 2.2 AA is what you build to in 2026. The good news: most failures cluster in a handful of fixable patterns.
Automated scans of the top million sites find the same offenders year after year: text contrast below the 4.5:1 minimum, images without alt text, form fields without programmatic labels, empty links and buttons, and missing document language. These are low-effort, high-impact fixes — contrast and labels alone typically clear the majority of a site’s automated errors.
The harder, more valuable work is keyboard and structure: every interactive element reachable and operable by keyboard in a logical order, a visible focus indicator (strengthened in WCAG 2.2), one H1 per page with a sane heading hierarchy, skip links, and modals that trap focus correctly and return it on close. If your site works well with a keyboard alone, you’ve solved most of what screen-reader users need too.
WCAG 2.2’s additions are practical: focus indicators must not be hidden behind sticky headers (Focus Not Obscured), pointer targets need at least 24×24 CSS pixels (Target Size Minimum), drag operations need a click alternative, and authentication can’t rely on cognitive tests like transcribing codes — password managers and paste must work.
The European Accessibility Act made this enforceable for ordinary businesses: since June 28, 2025, e-commerce, banking, transport, and e-books sold into the EU must be accessible, with member-state penalties reaching into six figures. The EAA’s technical benchmark (EN 301 549) references WCAG 2.1 AA today and is being updated toward 2.2 — building to 2.2 AA now covers both. Beyond compliance: accessible sites are also faster, more crawlable, and convert better.
Contrast to 4.5:1, alt text on meaningful images, labels on every form field.
Document language, page titles, and one logical heading hierarchy per page.
Link and button text that says what it does — no bare "click here" or icon-only buttons without names.
Full keyboard pass: reachable, operable, visible focus, no traps, logical order.
WCAG 2.2 specifics: 24px targets, focus not obscured, drag alternatives, paste-friendly auth.
Screen-reader test of your top three user journeys — signup, purchase, contact.
No — they reliably catch roughly a third of WCAG failures (contrast, alt text, labels). Keyboard behavior, focus management, and whether alt text is actually meaningful require a human pass. Use scanners for regression, humans for truth.
If you sell products or services to consumers in the EU, yes — like GDPR, it follows the customer, not your headquarters. Micro-enterprises (under 10 staff and €2M turnover) have a service exemption, but e-commerce thresholds are easy to cross.
No. WCAG 3 is years from being a legal benchmark; every current law points at WCAG 2.x AA. Work done for 2.2 AA will carry forward — the principles don't reset.
Yes, substantially — semantic HTML, alt text, and clear heading structure are foundational to both, so accessibility fixes routinely improve crawlability and rankings as a side effect.
Color contrast and keyboard focus states — both are usually quick CSS fixes that resolve a large share of common WCAG failures found in automated scans.
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