Accessibility is one of those topics that tends to get filed under “we should probably look at that” – until a legal deadline passes, a complaint arrives, or a customer can’t use your site and quietly goes elsewhere instead.
The European Accessibility Act came into force on 28 June 2025. We’re now in 2026, which means the deadline has passed and enforcement is active. If you haven’t thought about accessibility yet, this guide is designed to give you a clear, practical picture of what the rules actually mean for a small business in the UK, what WCAG 2.2 requires in plain English, and critically – why accessibility isn’t a one-time fix but something that needs to be maintained over time.
I’m Ed, I run EJK Web Solutions and I build and maintain WordPress websites for small businesses across the UK. I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t legal advice – but I work with these standards every day and I can tell you what they mean in practice.
What You Need to Know
This is where a lot of confusion sits, so it’s worth being direct.
The EAA is EU legislation. The UK left the EU, so it doesn’t automatically apply here in the same way. However – and this matters – if your business sells products or services to customers in the EU, the EAA applies to you regardless of where you’re based. That includes selling to customers in Ireland, which many UK businesses do without thinking of it as an EU transaction.
For UK businesses operating purely in the domestic market, the EAA doesn’t apply directly. But the Equality Act 2010 does, and it requires businesses to make reasonable adjustments to ensure disabled people have equal access to services – including websites. The legal exposure may be different, but the practical requirement is broadly similar.
There’s also a commercial reality worth noting. As EAA compliance becomes standard across Europe, the accessible experience is increasingly what users expect. An inaccessible website doesn’t just carry legal risk – it turns away customers.
The exemption worth knowing: microenterprises with fewer than 10 employees and under €2 million annual turnover are exempt from some EAA requirements. If that describes your business and you have no EU customers, the legal pressure is lower – but the accessibility case on ethical and commercial grounds remains.
What WCAG 2.2 actually requires
WCAG – the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – is the international standard that underpins the EAA and most national accessibility legislation. The current version is WCAG 2.2, and the target level for compliance is AA.
It’s built around four principles, often referred to as POUR:
Perceivable – information must be presented in ways users can perceive. This means alt text on images so screen readers can describe them, captions on videos, sufficient colour contrast between text and background, and content that doesn’t rely solely on colour to convey meaning.
Operable – users must be able to navigate and interact using a keyboard alone, without a mouse. This matters for users with motor impairments and those using assistive technology. It also means giving users enough time to complete tasks and avoiding content that flashes in ways that could trigger seizures.
Understandable – content and navigation must be clear and predictable. Pages should behave consistently, forms should have clear labels and helpful error messages, and the language should be identified in the code so screen readers pronounce it correctly.
Robust – the site must work reliably with current and future assistive technologies. This is largely about clean, valid code and proper use of semantic HTML.
WCAG 2.2 added several new criteria to the previous version, with particular focus on mobile users and people with cognitive disabilities – things like making sure touch targets are large enough to tap accurately and not hiding focus indicators that keyboard users rely on to know where they are on the page.
Why a one-time fix isn't enough
This is the part that catches people out. Accessibility isn’t a project you complete and tick off. It’s a state your website needs to maintain – and it requires active effort to do so.
Here’s why. Every time your site changes, accessibility can break. A new plugin update removes alt text functionality. A content editor uploads an image without a description. A form gets modified and loses its field labels. A theme update changes colour contrast ratios. None of these are dramatic events – they’re the ordinary life of an active WordPress site – but each one is a potential compliance issue.
The most common accessibility failures we see on WordPress sites aren’t from the original build. They’re from maintenance oversights:
- Images uploaded without alt text
- Form fields missing labels after an update
- Heading structure broken by a page builder change
- Focus indicators removed by a CSS update
- PDFs added to the site that are unreadable by screen readers
This is why accessibility needs to be part of your ongoing maintenance process, not a separate audit you do once every few years.
What maintenance should cover from an accessibility perspective
If you’re on a managed maintenance plan, here’s what should be happening routinely to protect accessibility compliance.
Plugin and theme updates reviewed for accessibility impact. Updates that change layout, colour, or form behaviour need checking. A good maintenance provider doesn’t just apply updates and move on – they check what changed.
New content reviewed before publishing. Images need alt text. Videos need captions or transcripts. PDFs need to be properly tagged or replaced with accessible alternatives. These aren’t difficult tasks, but they need to be part of the content workflow.
Regular automated scans. Tools like WAVE or Lighthouse can catch a proportion of accessibility issues automatically. They’re not a substitute for manual review – automated tools catch around 30–40% of WCAG issues – but they’re a useful early warning system when run regularly.
Colour contrast checks after design changes. Any change to colours, fonts, or background images needs a contrast check. We built a free contrast checker tool for exactly this purpose – it’s available to anyone, not just our clients.
Accessibility statement kept up to date. A compliant accessibility statement under the EAA isn’t a generic template – it needs to reflect the actual state of your site, document known issues, and show that you’re actively working to address them.
A note on accessibility overlays
You may have seen tools that claim to make your site accessible with a single line of code – usually a floating widget that lets users adjust text size, contrast, and so on. These are called accessibility overlays, and they’re worth approaching with significant caution.
The accessibility community has been consistent on this: overlays don’t make a site WCAG compliant, they layer cosmetic controls on top of underlying issues that remain. Several major overlay products have faced legal action in the US for making false compliance claims. The W3C, the body that develops WCAG, has published guidance noting that overlays cannot substitute for actual accessibility work.
If you’re considering an overlay as a compliance solution, the honest answer is that it isn’t one. It may help some users in some situations, but it won’t protect you legally and it won’t fix the underlying barriers.
Practical next steps for small businesses
If you’re not sure where your site stands, the most useful first step is a basic audit. Run your site through WebAIM’s WAVE tool – it’s free and will surface the most common issues immediately. Then check your colour contrast using our free contrast checker.
Beyond that, the practical priorities for most small business WordPress sites are:
- Ensure all images have appropriate alt text
- Check all forms have visible, descriptive labels
- Test keyboard navigation through your key pages
- Verify colour contrast meets WCAG 2.2 AA ratios
- Check that your site has a published, accurate accessibility statement
- Make sure any PDFs linked from your site are accessible or replaced with HTML alternatives
None of this is beyond a small business – but it does require someone to be actively watching for regressions as your site evolves. A plug in update or a new page built without accessibility in mind can undo careful work quickly.
If you’re on one of our maintenance plans, accessibility monitoring is part of how we look after your site. If you’re not sure whether your current provider is covering this, the questions to ask any maintenance provider guide gives you a framework for finding out.
EJK Web Solutions provides WordPress website maintenance, design and SEO services to small businesses across the UK.
Sources:
- AbilityNet: European Accessibility Act – abilitynet.org.uk
- Business Disability Forum: EAA Guide – businessdisabilityforum.org.uk
- Travers Smith: EAA legal briefing – traverssmith.com
- W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 – w3.org
- WebAIM: WAVE accessibility evaluation tool – wave.webaim.org