Website accessibility requirements in 2026: WCAG, ADA, EAA

Website accessibility requirements in 2026 point to one technical benchmark: the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at level AA. Different laws enforce it in each market: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the USA, the Equality Act 2010 in the UK, the European Accessibility Act in the EU, Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and India’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016.

Which website accessibility requirements apply to you?

The website accessibility requirements that apply to you depend mainly on where your customers are, not where your company is registered. If you sell into several countries, meet the strictest benchmark among them, which in practice means WCAG 2.2 AA.

What does WCAG 2.2 level AA mean?

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) standard for accessible web content. They’re written as testable success criteria at three levels, A, AA and AAA, and laws almost always ask for AA.

WCAG 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023, was updated on 12 December 2024 and is also ISO/IEC 40500:2025. It adds nine success criteria to WCAG 2.1, six of them at levels A and AA. The W3C says content that meets 2.2 also meets 2.1 and 2.0. One build therefore covers the US Title II rule, EN 301 549 and India’s GIGW 3.0, which all cite 2.1.

If you’re not sure which of these rules reach your site, tell us where your customers are and we’ll help you work out what to test first.

What are the website accessibility requirements in the USA?

In the USA, businesses open to the public must make their goods and services accessible online under Title III of the ADA, but no federal regulation sets a technical standard for them. State and local governments must meet WCAG 2.1 AA under a separate Title II rule, by 26 April 2027 or 26 April 2028.

Private businesses (Title III)

The Department of Justice’s March 2022 guidance says businesses open to the public must make what they offer accessible, including online. It also says the department “does not have a regulation setting out detailed standards”. It names WCAG as helpful guidance, so WCAG AA is the target most businesses adopt.

Without a fixed rule, enforcement happens through lawsuits. Law firm Seyfarth Shaw counted 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in US federal courts in 2025, up 27% on 2024. New York (1,021), Florida (961) and Illinois (585) saw the most. State court cases aren’t in that count.

State and local governments (Title II)

The DOJ’s April 2024 rule requires state and local governments, including public schools and universities, to make web content and mobile apps meet WCAG 2.1 AA. An interim final rule, effective 20 April 2026, pushed the deadlines back a year:

• 50,000 people or more: from 24 April 2026 to 26 April 2027.
• Under 50,000 people, and special district governments: from 26 April 2027 to 26 April 2028.

The DOJ says it may propose changes to the rule’s substance during the extension. If you sell booking, payment or permit software to US public bodies, these dates apply to your product too.

What does UK law require?

UK law requires anyone providing services to the public to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people under the Equality Act 2010, and that duty covers websites. Public sector bodies also have a specific rule: their websites and apps must meet WCAG 2.2 AA and publish an accessibility statement.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) describes the duty as anticipatory. You’re expected to think ahead about the barriers disabled customers face, not wait for a complaint. What’s “reasonable” depends on your size, resources and the cost of the change, so a sole trader isn’t held to the same bar as a national retailer.

Public bodies fall under the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. GOV.UK says their sites must meet WCAG 2.2 AA unless an exemption applies. The Government Digital Service checks a sample of sites each year, and the EHRC or the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland enforces.

The UK has no private-sector law like the European Accessibility Act, but UK firms selling to EU consumers must meet it for those customers.

Does the European Accessibility Act apply to your business?

The European Accessibility Act applies if you sell covered products or services, such as e-commerce, banking or e-books, to consumers in the EU. It has applied since 28 June 2025. Microenterprises providing services are exempt: businesses with fewer than 10 staff and an annual turnover or balance sheet of €2 million or less.

The European Commission’s list runs from computers, smartphones, ATMs and ticket machines to telephony, passenger transport, banking, e-books and e-commerce. For most small firms, the way in is an online shop or booking flow. The rules follow the customer, so sellers outside the EU are covered when they serve EU consumers.

Ireland’s Competition and Consumer Protection Commission notes that microenterprises selling products, not services, must still meet the requirements. The directive sets its requirements in Annex I and doesn’t name a WCAG version. In practice, firms work to EN 301 549, the European standard whose web section is built on WCAG 2.1 AA.

Each EU country sets its own penalties and enforcement body. Services that rely on products already in use before 28 June 2025 have a transition period that ends on 28 June 2030.

Say a 12-person homeware shop in Leeds (a hypothetical example) ships to customers in Ireland and Germany. With more than 10 staff it isn’t a microenterprise, so its online store is likely to fall under the Act for those customers. It already owes UK customers reasonable adjustments, and one WCAG 2.2 AA build covers both.

What do Australia and India require?

Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act 1992 makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with disability when providing goods and services, and that includes websites and apps. India’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 requires government and private service providers to follow national accessibility rules, which cite the Indian standard IS 17802.

Australia

The Australian Human Rights Commission handles complaints under the Act and tries to resolve them through conciliation. Its Guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services, published in April 2025, point to WCAG 2.2 AA as the minimum. They cover apps, self-service machines and AI tools as well as websites. The guidelines aren’t legally binding, but they show what the Commission expects.

India

Section 46 of the RPwD Act requires service providers, “whether government or private”, to make services accessible within two years of the rules being notified. Section 89 sets fines of up to ₹10,000 for a first breach and ₹50,000 to ₹5 lakh for later ones.

• May 2023: an amendment to Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules 2017 required websites and apps to meet IS 17802 Parts 1 and 2, from the Bureau of Indian Standards.
• 8 November 2024: in Rajive Raturi v Union of India, the Supreme Court held Rule 15 invalid because it set out recommendations rather than mandatory standards, and ordered mandatory rules.
• July 2026: the government issued draft RPwD (Amendment) Rules 2026, dated 16 July. They’d require an Accessibility Conformance Report, with 12 months to comply for firms with turnover of ₹500 crore or more and 18 months for smaller ones. They also reach firms abroad that serve people in India.

We couldn’t find a final version at the time of writing, so treat them as a draft. Government websites follow the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW) 3.0, which conform to WCAG 2.1 AA.

A WCAG 2.2 AA website accessibility checklist

Start with the failures that show up most. WebAIM’s February 2026 scan of one million home pages found low-contrast text on 83.9%, missing image alt text on 53.1%, unlabelled form fields on 51% and empty links on 46.3%.

• Text contrast (1.4.3): at least 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text.
• Non-text contrast (1.4.11): buttons, form borders and icons at least 3:1 against their background.
• Alt text (1.1.1): describe useful images; give decorative ones empty alt text.
• Forms (1.3.1, 3.3.1, 3.3.2): every field has a visible label, and errors say what’s wrong in words.
• Keyboard (2.1.1, 2.1.2): everything works with Tab, Enter, Space and arrow keys, with no traps.
• Focus (2.4.7, 2.4.11): a visible focus outline that sticky headers and cookie banners don’t hide.
• Structure (1.3.1, 3.1.1): headings in a logical order, landmarks and the page language set.
• Names (2.4.4, 4.1.2): no empty links or buttons; icon buttons need a name screen readers can read.
• Zoom (1.4.4, 1.4.10): text grows to 200%, and pages work at 320 CSS pixels wide without sideways scrolling.
• Target size (2.5.8): tap targets at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or spaced so they don’t crowd each other.
• Dragging (2.5.7): sliders, maps and drag-to-reorder also work with a single tap or click.
• Help and repeat entry (3.2.6, 3.3.7): contact links sit in the same place on every page, and nobody retypes details they’ve given.
• Logins (3.3.8): no puzzle or memory test without an alternative, and pasting passwords works.
• Media and motion (1.2.2, 2.2.2, 2.3.1): captions on video, a pause button on carousels and nothing flashing more than three times a second.

Criteria 2.4.11, 2.5.7, 2.5.8, 3.2.6, 3.3.7 and 3.3.8 are new in WCAG 2.2, so an older audit won’t have checked them. If you’re planning a rebuild, our website redesign checklist shows where accessibility testing fits before launch.

Why aren’t overlay widgets a fix?

Overlay widgets don’t fix accessibility because they sit on top of a page and can’t reliably repair the code underneath, such as missing labels or a checkout that won’t work by keyboard. In April 2025 the US Federal Trade Commission ordered overlay vendor accessiBe to pay $1 million over its claim that its widget could make any website WCAG compliant.

An overlay is a third-party script, shown as a floating accessibility icon, that promises to find and fix problems automatically. The FTC’s final order, announced on 22 April 2025, bars accessiBe from making that claim without evidence.

Disabled visitors already use their own screen readers, magnifiers and voice control, and a widget that rewrites the page can clash with them. The real fix lives in your templates: correct HTML, labelled controls and tested keyboard paths.

How do you test accessibility, and what does it cost?

Test in three layers: automated scanners for quick wins, manual keyboard and screen reader checks for what scanners miss, and an expert audit against WCAG 2.2 AA before a major launch. Published price guides put a professional audit of a small to mid-sized site at about $1,500 to $5,000.

Scanners catch only part of the problem, so spend 10 minutes using your site with the keyboard alone.

That audit range comes from DigitalA11Y’s February 2026 guide. WebAbility’s July 2026 roundup lists $25 to $100 a page for simple pages, $100 to $250 for interactive ones and $5,000 to $25,000 for manual audits of mid-sized sites. At mid-2026 rates, $1,500 to $5,000 is roughly £1,100 to £3,750, A$2,200 to A$7,250 or ₹1,42,500 to ₹4,75,000, though local providers price differently.

Fixing what an audit finds costs extra, and it costs least when accessibility is part of the original build. That’s why it belongs in the quote, as our guide to how much a website costs explains.

What to do next

Run the free tools on your five busiest pages and fix contrast, alt text, labels and empty links first. Then book a manual audit before your next big release.

If you’d like a website built to WCAG 2.2 AA from the start, or an existing one brought up to it, talk to us about your project. We build for businesses in the USA, UK, Australia and India.