Accessibility in 2026: WCAG 2.2, the European Accessibility Act and what UK sites should do

Every year WebAIM runs automated accessibility checks on the home pages of the top one million websites. In 2025, 94.8% of them failed, with an average of 51 detectable errors per page. That is a small improvement on 2024, and it still means almost everyone has work to do.

The good news is that the failures are not exotic. Six well-understood problems account for the vast majority of them, and every one of them can be fixed by a competent developer in an afternoon per template.

Automated tools can only catch some problems, so a clean scan is the start, not the finish. Keyboard and screen-reader testing still matter.

What actually goes wrong, and how to fix it#

• Low contrast text. Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, and large text 3:1. Grey-on-white "elegant" text is the usual culprit. Check your palette once, store it as design tokens, and the problem stops recurring.
• Missing alternative text. Every meaningful image needs alt text that says what it is for, not what it looks like. Decorative images should have an empty alt="" so screen readers skip them.
• Unlabelled form fields. Placeholder text is not a label. Every input needs a visible <label> connected to it.
• Empty links and buttons. Icon-only controls (a magnifying glass, a hamburger menu, social icons) need an accessible name, usually via aria-label or visually hidden text.
• Missing page language. One attribute, <html lang="en-GB">, tells assistive technology how to pronounce the page.

What changed in WCAG 2.2#

WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation in October 2023. It added nine success criteria and removed one obsolete one (4.1.1 Parsing). The six at levels A and AA are the ones most sites are measured against:

The remaining three (2.4.12, 2.4.13 and 3.3.9) are at AAA, which few organisations target across a whole site.

The law: what applies to a UK business#

• Equality Act 2010. Service providers must make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and that includes websites. There is no specific technical standard written into the Act, but WCAG 2.2 AA is the benchmark everyone uses.
• Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018. Public sector websites and apps must meet WCAG 2.2 AA and publish an accessibility statement. Government services have been monitored against 2.2 since October 2024.
• European Accessibility Act. It has applied since 28 June 2025 to many products and services sold to consumers in the EU, including e-commerce. It applies to UK businesses selling into EU countries. Micro-enterprises providing services (fewer than 10 staff and turnover or balance sheet of no more than €2 million) are exempt, but the exemption does not cover products.

A checklist you can run this week#

• Run a free automated check (WAVE, axe DevTools or Lighthouse) on your home page, a content page, a form and your checkout or contact page.
• Fix colour contrast in your design tokens, not page by page.
• Add alt text to meaningful images and empty alt="" to decorative ones.
• Give every form field a visible label and every icon-only button a name.
• Unplug your mouse and complete your main journey with the keyboard alone. Can you always see where focus is?
• Check that the cookie banner and sticky header never cover the focused element.
• Make every tap target at least 24 × 24 px, and comfortably larger on mobile.
• Turn on a screen reader (VoiceOver on Mac and iPhone, NVDA on Windows) and listen to your home page for five minutes.
• Publish an accessibility statement that says what you have tested and how to report a problem.