Accessibility isn’t only a government website problem. If your website sells something, takes bookings or tells people how to reach you, the Disability Discrimination Act applies to it, and a customer who can’t use it has the same right to complain as one who couldn’t get through your front door.
The standard to aim for is WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Most of the fixes are cheap, and they make the site better for everyone else too: clear headings, readable text and forms that work properly on a phone aren’t special treatment, just good design.
Why the law reaches your website
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone with a disability when you provide goods or services. A website that provides information or services counts as a service. That has been the Australian Human Rights Commission’s position for a long time, and it was tested early: in 2000, a blind man named Bruce Maguire successfully complained that the Sydney Olympics website couldn’t be used with a screen reader.
In April 2025 the Commission published new Guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services. They apply to private businesses, not just public bodies. The guidelines aren’t legally binding on their own, but the Commission says organisations should meet the requirements of the latest published version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and a business that has followed them is in a far better position if a complaint ever comes in.
There’s a defence of “unjustifiable hardship”, but it has to be shown, not assumed. “We liked the light grey text” won’t cut it.
This is general information, not legal advice. If you’ve received a complaint, talk to a lawyer.
WCAG 2.2 AA in plain English
WCAG is the international standard published by the W3C. The current version is 2.2, released in October 2023. Each requirement (called a success criterion) sits at Level A, AA or AAA. Level A is the bare minimum, AAA is very demanding and rarely achievable across a whole site, and AA is the level everyone in practice aims for, including Australian government agencies.
You don’t need to read the standard itself. It’s long and written for developers. What matters is the idea behind it: someone should be able to use your site if they can’t see the screen, can’t use a mouse, can’t hear audio, or find dense layouts hard to process.
WCAG 2.2 added a handful of new Level A and AA requirements over the older 2.1. The ones that most often catch small business sites are:
- Target size. Buttons and links need to be at least 24 by 24 pixels, or have enough space around them. Tiny social icons crammed together in a footer often fail this.
- Focus not obscured. When someone tabs through the page with a keyboard, the highlighted item can’t be hidden behind a sticky header or a cookie banner.
- Accessible authentication. Logins can’t rely only on remembering or retyping things, such as a puzzle CAPTCHA with no alternative.
- Consistent help (Level A). If you offer a phone number or chat link on every page, it should be in the same place on every page.
The W3C has a short summary of what’s new in WCAG 2.2 if you want the full list.
The practical checklist
These are the issues we find most often when we audit a small business site, roughly in order of how often they come up.
Colour contrast
Text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background. Large text (about 24 pixels, or about 19 pixels if bold) needs 3:1. Buttons, form field borders and icons that carry meaning also need 3:1.
The usual offenders: light grey body text on white, white text over a photo with no overlay, and brand colours like pale green or mustard used for button text. Paste your colours into the free contrast checker at WebAIM and you’ll know in ten seconds. If your brand colour fails, it can still be used for backgrounds and accents. Just don’t put text in it. We cover this in more detail in colour contrast and readability.
Alt text on images
Screen readers read out the alt text of an image. Write what the image is telling the reader, in a sentence or less.
- Bad: “IMG_4471.jpg” or “electrician”
- Better: “Electrician installing a switchboard in a new home in Lennox Head”
- Decorative images (a background texture, a divider) should have empty alt text so screen readers skip them.
Don’t stuff keywords in. “Best electrician Ballina electrician Northern Rivers” helps nobody and reads out like a stuck record. If your site relies on lots of photos, our guide to website photos covers getting them right in the first place.
Headings in the right order
Each page gets one H1 (the main page title), then H2s for sections and H3s inside those. Screen reader users jump between headings the way sighted people skim, so headings need to describe the section.
The common mistake is choosing heading levels for their size. Someone wants smaller text, so they use an H4 straight under the H1. Set the size in the design, and pick the level for the structure.
Keyboard use
Put your mouse away and press Tab. You should be able to reach every link, button and form field in a sensible order, and you should always be able to see where you are. Press Enter to follow links and Space to tick boxes. Press Escape to close a popup.
Things that commonly break: menus that only open on hover, popups you can’t close without a mouse, sliders that trap focus, and a focus outline that a designer removed because they thought it looked untidy. Don’t remove the outline. Style it to suit your brand instead.
Link text that makes sense alone
Screen reader users often pull up a list of every link on a page. A list that reads “here, read more, learn more, here” is useless. Write links that say where they go: “see our switchboard upgrade prices” rather than “for prices, see here”. It also helps Google understand the page you’re linking to.
Captions and transcripts
Any video with speech needs captions. Auto-generated captions from YouTube are a starting point, but they mangle local place names and technical terms, so check and correct them. A video of a Ballina practice saying “Alstonville” will usually come out as something unrepeatable.
Audio-only content, such as a podcast episode, needs a transcript. Avoid video that autoplays with sound.
Forms
Every field needs a visible label, not just placeholder text that disappears when you start typing. Error messages should say what’s wrong (“Enter a mobile number with 10 digits”) and appear next to the field. Required fields should be marked in words or with an explained symbol, not only by turning the label red.
Zoom and reflow
Zoom your browser to 200%. The text should get bigger and the layout should rearrange without text overlapping or getting cut off. On a phone, pinch zoom shouldn’t be disabled.
A 30-minute test you can do yourself
You don’t need special software to find most problems. Work through this on your homepage, your main service page and your contact page:
- Tab through the whole page using only the keyboard. Can you reach and use everything, and can you always see where you are?
- Zoom to 200%. Does anything overlap or disappear?
- Check your body text, button text and link colours in a contrast checker.
- Right-click a few images and inspect them, or use a free browser extension like WAVE (also from WebAIM) to list missing alt text and heading problems.
- Submit your contact form with errors on purpose. Are the error messages clear?
- Turn on your phone’s screen reader (VoiceOver on iPhone, TalkBack on Android) for five minutes. It’s humbling, and you’ll learn more from that than from any report.
Automated checkers are good at the mechanical problems, like missing alt text and low contrast. They can’t tell you whether your alt text makes sense or whether the page is usable in order. That’s what the keyboard and screen reader tests are for.
A word on accessibility overlays
You’ll see plugins and services that add a little wheelchair icon to your site and promise instant compliance. We don’t recommend them. They don’t fix the underlying code, they can clash with the screen readers and settings people already use, and accessibility specialists widely advise against them. An overlay is not a substitute for an accessible site. Fixing the real issues is usually less work than people expect.
What to do next
If you’re planning a new site, build accessibility into the brief from day one. It costs very little at design stage and a lot to retrofit. Contrast, heading structure and keyboard use are all things we look at when we design a website, and if you’re on Elementor, our notes on accessibility in Elementor builds cover the settings that matter.
Already got a site that struggled with the 30-minute test? The problems usually split into quick content fixes and a few that need a developer. We can help you sort one pile from the other if you send us the URL, and handle the developer pile as WordPress and Elementor fixes.