Web accessibility in plain English: what WCAG 2.2 means for your site

Web accessibility means building a website that everyone can use, including people with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive differences. The international standard for it is called WCAG, now at version 2.2, and in much of the world meeting it is a legal requirement, not just good practice. The reassuring part: most of what it asks for is simply good design, and doing it well makes your site clearer and easier for every visitor, not only disabled ones.

Accessibility has a reputation for being technical and dry, which is a shame, because the ideas behind it are straightforward and humane. Here is what it actually means for a small business site, without the jargon.

What accessibility actually is

An accessible website is one that does not lock anyone out. Someone who cannot see well should be able to read it with a screen reader or at a larger size. Someone who cannot use a mouse should be able to do everything with a keyboard. Someone with a tremor should be able to tap a button without hitting the wrong one. Someone who finds dense text hard should still be able to follow it. Accessibility is just the practice of not accidentally excluding people, and a surprising number of sites exclude people without ever meaning to.

Why it matters now

Two reasons, one practical and one legal. The practical one: roughly one in five people has a disability of some kind, so an inaccessible site turns away a real slice of your potential customers, and the changes that help them usually help everyone. The legal one: accessibility is now enforceable law in much of the world. The European Accessibility Act came fully into force in 2025, and similar rules apply in the UK, the US, and elsewhere. For many businesses, an inaccessible site is now a genuine legal exposure, not just a missed opportunity.

What WCAG 2.2 added, in plain terms

WCAG 2.2 is the current version of the guidelines, and it added several requirements aimed squarely at making sites easier for people with motor and cognitive difficulties. In plain English: the highlight that shows where you are when tabbing through a page must not be hidden behind a sticky header. Buttons and links must be big enough to tap without precision, with a little space around them. Anything you can do by dragging must also be doable with a simple tap. You must not be made to re-enter information you have already given earlier in the same process. And logging in must not depend on a memory test or a puzzle, so password managers and copy-paste must work.

Read those back and you will notice something: every one of them is just a frustration removed. They are good design requirements that happen to be written down as a standard.

The things worth getting right first

If you do nothing else, get the basics right. Make sure text has enough contrast against its background to be read easily. Make sure every image that carries meaning has a text description. Make sure the site works with the keyboard alone. Make sure headings are used properly, so a screen reader can navigate the page in a sensible order. Make sure tap targets are a reasonable size. These few things cover a large share of real-world accessibility problems, and none of them makes a site look worse.

What this means for your website

Accessibility is not a separate, expensive add-on. It is part of building a site properly, and the same work that makes a site accessible tends to make it faster, clearer, and easier for everyone to use. It is also, increasingly, the law. We treat it as a normal part of the craft rather than a box to tick at the end, which is the whole approach behind what makes good web design and every site we build.