Blog · General guide
Why website accessibility matters — and why WCAG AA or AAA is the goal
2026-08-30
An inaccessible site shuts people out and can cost millions. Fashion Nova’s $5.15 million accessibility settlement is a warning. Set a WCAG AA or AAA goal, then review and fix the live pages.
Accessibility is how people actually use your site
A website that only works with a mouse, faint grey text, or images with no alternative text is closed to a large part of your audience. Screen-reader users, keyboard-only users, people with low vision, and people who cannot hear autoplaying video are not edge cases. They are customers, staff, and partners. Accessibility is also the difference between a site that is legally defensible and one that becomes a claim. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 expects service providers to make reasonable adjustments. Public-sector sites have a clearer bar: the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations expect WCAG Level AA. Private businesses are not exempt from treating people fairly online.
WCAG Level A, AA, and AAA — pick a goal
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the W3C are the shared standard courts, regulators, and procurement teams point to. There are three conformance levels. Level A is the floor: the worst barriers, such as missing names on controls or video with no alternative. Level AA is the usual target for business and government. It covers contrast, resizable text, visible focus, captions, consistent navigation, and error messages that a screen reader can follow. Level AAA is the highest published goal. It adds stricter contrast, sign language for some video, extended audio description, and extra reading-level and timing rules. AAA is rarely required for an entire site, because some AAA criteria do not fit every page. Many organisations still use AAA as a stretch goal on key journeys — home, apply, checkout, login — while committing the whole site to AA.
What AA and AAA look like in practice
An AA review asks: can someone tab through every form? Does every image that carries meaning have a text alternative? Is contrast at least 4.5:1 for normal text? Can the page zoom to 200% without losing content? Are errors announced, not only shown in red? An AAA review goes further: 7:1 contrast, no timing traps, clearer plain language, and richer media alternatives. We agree the goal with you first. AA is the right default for most commercial sites. AAA is worth specifying when you serve disabled users as a core audience, bid for public contracts, or want the extra margin on the pages that convert.
A company that paid for getting it wrong
Fashion Nova, the US fashion retailer, agreed a $5.15 million class-action settlement after a blind customer said fashionnova.com could not be used with a screen reader. The claim ran for years (Alcazar v. Fashion Nova). The settlement fund was meant to compensate legally blind people who had tried to use the site, and the company agreed to move the website toward substantial conformance with WCAG 2.1. Fashion Nova did not admit liability — that is typical — but the bill and the five years of litigation are the point. In February 2026 the US Department of Justice also told the court that a vague promise to “make the site accessible” is not enough. The lesson for any UK or international site is the same: overlays and policy pages do not replace real markup, contrast, keyboard access, and tested journeys. Domino’s Pizza is the other name boards remember: after the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2019, the company had to make its website and app usable, not argue that a phone number was enough.
Review first, then implement
A useful accessibility project has two parts. First, a review of the live site against the WCAG level you choose — AA or AAA — with a written list of barriers, severity, and the pages they sit on. Second, implementation: we fix the templates, forms, media, and contrast in the codebase you already have, or we build the next release to that level. We do not sell a widget that claims to make a broken site compliant overnight. If you already have a public-sector accessibility statement, we can work to the gaps you have already published.
Official sources
Apply for a review and implementation
Tell us your URL and whether you want Level AA or AAA. We review the live site, list the barriers, and quote the implementation. Approval comes before any build work.