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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