Website accessibility tends to sit near the bottom of most businesses’ priority lists, filed somewhere between “eventually” and “if we get complained about”. Having been involved in speccing out websites that meet Gov.UK standards, I think that’s a mistake for reasons that go well beyond compliance box-ticking, and I want to lay out why, because the legal picture is more real than most people assume, and the commercial case is bigger than most people realise.
A quarter of the UK population, not a niche audience
Start with scale. The latest Family Resources Survey found that 16.8 million people in the UK, a quarter of the entire population, reported a disability in 2023/24, up from 19% just a decade earlier (House of Commons Library, UK disability statistics briefing). That’s not a small, specialist audience to design around, it’s a genuinely mainstream share of anyone’s potential customer base. A website that’s difficult to use for a quarter of the population isn’t a minor usability gap, it’s a significant chunk of addressable market quietly being turned away before they’ve even had the chance to consider what you offer.
The legal duty is real, even without a dramatic deadline
Here’s where I’d correct a common misconception. Unlike GDPR or the accessibility regulations that hit the public sector, there wasn’t a single dramatic “compliance deadline” moment for private UK businesses, which I think is exactly why so many have never properly addressed it. The duty has actually been in force since the Equality Act 2010 itself came into effect. Section 20 requires service providers to make “reasonable adjustments” so disabled people can access their services on an equal basis, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s own statutory Code of Practice explicitly confirms that websites count as a service under this definition (GOV.UK, “Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies”). Crucially, this duty is described as anticipatory, meaning businesses are expected to have removed barriers proactively, not to wait until a disabled customer complains before fixing anything.
Why there’s no test case yet, and why that’s not reassuring
I think it’s worth being honest about something that softens the urgency in people’s minds, there has never been a full UK court judgment specifically on private-sector website accessibility under the Equality Act. When the RNIB previously brought a claim against the airline BMIbaby over its inaccessible website, the case was settled out of court, with the company taking action to fix accessibility before it reached judgment (Scope, “UK laws that cover web accessibility”). I’d read that pattern less as evidence the law has no teeth, and more as evidence that the businesses on the receiving end of a credible claim have consistently judged it cheaper and less reputationally damaging to fix the problem quietly than to fight it publicly. The absence of a landmark case isn’t the same as the absence of risk.
The EU adds a harder deadline, even for UK-only businesses
If your business sells to customers in the EU, and I’d include any UK ecommerce site shipping into Europe here, there’s a firmer compliance point worth knowing about. The European Accessibility Act came into force on 28 June 2025, and it applies extraterritorially, meaning a UK business is bound by it if it sells relevant digital products or services to EU consumers, regardless of Brexit or where the business itself is based (Taylor Wessing, “The UK’s regulatory approach to accessibility”). There’s a genuine exemption for micro-enterprises, businesses with fewer than 10 employees and under €2 million annual turnover, but anything larger selling into EU markets is expected to comply, with existing products and services given until 28 June 2030 to catch up (Hamlins LLP, “UK business with EU customers? The European Accessibility Act”).
What I’d actually take from this
WCAG 2.2 at Level AA has become the practical benchmark referenced by regulators, courts and the EAA alike, even where UK law itself doesn’t name a specific technical standard directly. I wouldn’t frame accessibility work purely as risk mitigation, though, because that undersells the commercial argument. A website that works properly for keyboard users, screen reader users and people with cognitive or motor impairments tends, in practice, to be a genuinely better-built website for everyone, clearer structure, more logical navigation, better-labelled forms. The legal duty gives you a reason to prioritise it. The size of the audience you’re currently under-serving is the reason it’s actually worth doing properly.
Rich Jarrott, the founder of ZenithSpark, has worked on a number of UK Government and European Union websites where meeting accessibility standards is a core part of the brief. If you’d like advice on how to make your site accessible, get in touch.
Sources:
- House of Commons Library, “UK disability statistics: Prevalence and life experiences”
- GOV.UK, “Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies”
- Scope, “UK laws that cover web accessibility”
- Taylor Wessing, “The UK’s regulatory approach to accessibility” (2025)
- Hamlins LLP, “UK business with EU customers? The European Accessibility Act” (2025)