Web accessibility means making the web work for everyone, regardless of any impairment or disability they may have. Simple accessibility failings that you may not even notice can make a website impossible for others to use. For example, a website may look fine to you, although the text contrast may be too low for a colour blind user to identify the text, and it may be totally non-navigable by a blind person. Ensuring your website is accessible means ensuring it works for everyone, and that benefits users, your business, and society as a whole.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define a set of rules which must be met in order for a website to be accessible. A significant proportion of websites do not conform to these guidelines, so following them not only improves experiences for users with accessibility requirements, but also makes them more likely to use your website or services instead of a competitor’s.

In the public sector the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are a legal requirement, and there is growing momentum in the private sector to also start following these important guidelines.