Is Your Website Breaking UK Equality Law in 2026? A Plain-English Guide to Web Accessibility for Derby Businesses

Most Derby business owners think website accessibility is something large corporations worry about. It is not.

Under the Equality Act 2010, every UK business — sole trader, limited company, or anything in between — has a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people can access their services. Your website is a service. An inaccessible website is a breach of that duty.

In 2026, enforcement pressure has increased significantly. The UK Government updated its accessibility guidance in line with WCAG 2.2 standards, and discrimination claims related to inaccessible websites have appeared in UK tribunals. Meanwhile, search engines have made accessibility signals part of their ranking algorithms — meaning an inaccessible website ranks worse on Google as well as excluding real customers.

The uncomfortable truth is that 98% of UK websites fail at least one basic accessibility check. The majority of Derby business websites fail multiple. This guide explains what web accessibility actually means, what is legally required, the five most common failures your website probably has right now, and why fixing them is good for business — not just compliance.

What Is Website Accessibility — and What Does the Law Actually Say?

Website accessibility means designing and building websites so that people with disabilities can use them effectively. This includes people who are:

• Visually impaired or blind — using screen readers that read page content aloud
• Hard of hearing or deaf — relying on captions and text alternatives for audio/video content
• Motor impaired — navigating websites using keyboard only, switch controls, or voice recognition
• Cognitively impaired — needing clear language, consistent navigation, and simple layouts

In the UK, one in five adults has a disability. The combined spending power of disabled consumers — known as the “Purple Pound” — is estimated at £274 billion annually. An inaccessible website excludes a fifth of potential customers before they even read what you offer.

The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on service providers to make “reasonable adjustments” for disabled people. Courts have consistently found that websites constitute a service under the Act. While there has not yet been a landmark UK case specifically about commercial website accessibility, the legal framework is clear: a business whose website prevents disabled users from accessing its services may be found in breach of the Act.

The technical standard used to measure accessibility is WCAG — Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, currently at version 2.2. The UK Government’s own guidance references WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the benchmark. Meeting this standard is considered the minimum “reasonable adjustment” for most UK businesses.

The 5 Most Common Accessibility Failures on Derby Business Websites

Based on accessibility audits of business websites across Derby and the East Midlands, these are the failures that appear most frequently:

Failure 1: Images with No Alt Text

Alt text is a text description of an image, read aloud by screen readers for blind or visually impaired users. Without it, screen reader users hear “image” or a file name like “IMG_4521.jpg” — which communicates nothing.

This is the most common accessibility failure on UK websites. Every meaningful image on your website should have a concise, descriptive alt text. Decorative images should have an empty alt attribute (alt="") so screen readers skip them. Logo images should include your business name.

Fixing this is free and takes less than an hour for most small business websites.

Failure 2: Insufficient Colour Contrast

WCAG requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and background for normal text, and 3:1 for large text. Many Derby business websites use light grey text on white backgrounds, or white text on pale colours — patterns that look clean and modern but fail accessibility contrast requirements.

This affects not just users with visual impairments but anyone reading on a bright screen outdoors, on a phone in sunlight, or on an older monitor. Poor contrast is also a usability problem for everyone, not just a compliance issue.

You can check your website’s contrast ratios using the free WebAIM Contrast Checker tool. Any failing combinations should be corrected in your website’s CSS.

Failure 3: No Keyboard Navigation

Users who cannot use a mouse — people with motor impairments, those using switch access devices, or keyboard power users — navigate websites entirely using the Tab key. Every interactive element on your website: links, buttons, form fields, dropdown menus, must be reachable and usable via keyboard alone.

The most common keyboard navigation failures are:

• Dropdown menus that only open on hover — unusable without a mouse
• No visible focus indicator — the user cannot see which element is currently selected
• Modal dialogs that trap keyboard focus — the user cannot escape
• Custom interactive elements built without keyboard support

If you have never tried navigating your own website using Tab and Enter only, do it now. Most business owners are surprised how quickly they get stuck.

Failure 4: Forms Without Proper Labels

Contact forms, quote request forms, newsletter signups — if the input fields are not properly labelled in the HTML code, screen readers cannot tell users what information to enter. Placeholder text inside the field does not count as a label; it disappears when the user starts typing and cannot be read by all screen readers.

Every form field needs a visible label element associated with it in the HTML using the ‘for’ and ‘id’ attributes. Error messages need to clearly identify which field is wrong and how to fix it. This is one of the most common failures on business contact forms across Derby.

Failure 5: Videos Without Captions

If your website includes video content — explainer videos, testimonials, product demonstrations — those videos need captions for deaf or hard of hearing users. Auto-generated captions from YouTube or Vimeo are a reasonable starting point but typically have errors that need correction.

If your videos have no audio content, they need an alternative text description. If they contain important information delivered only in audio, that content needs a text transcript available on the page.

Why Accessibility Also Improves Your Google Rankings

Accessibility and SEO are not separate concerns — they are closely aligned. Many of the changes that make a website accessible also make it rank better on Google:

• Alt text on images — Google reads alt text to understand image content. Descriptive alt text improves image search visibility and gives Google more context about your page
• Clear heading structure — WCAG requires logical heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3). Google uses heading structure to understand page content and extract featured snippets
• Keyboard navigability — requires clean, semantic HTML. Clean HTML is faster to render and easier for Googlebot to crawl
• Sufficient colour contrast — improves readability metrics. Google uses dwell time and bounce rate as ranking signals; if people leave quickly because they cannot read your content, your rankings suffer
• Captions on videos — Google cannot watch videos but can read captions. Captioned videos rank in search results; uncaptioned ones are invisible

A 2026 study by WebAIM found that websites meeting WCAG AA standards had measurably better Core Web Vitals scores than non-compliant sites. Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. Accessibility is not a distraction from SEO — it is part of it.

What Derby Businesses Should Do This Month

You do not need to fix everything at once. Start with the highest-impact, lowest-effort changes:

Week 1: Audit what you have

• Run your website through the free WAVE accessibility checker at wave.webaim.org. It shows errors, warnings and structural issues on every page
• Run Google Lighthouse in Chrome (F12 → Lighthouse tab → Accessibility) for a scored report with specific issues identified
• Try navigating your entire website using only the Tab key. Note every place you get stuck

Week 2: Fix the quick wins

• Add or correct alt text on all images
• Fix any colour contrast failures identified by WAVE
• Ensure all form fields have proper visible labels
• Add a visible focus indicator to links and buttons if one is missing

Month 2 onwards: Structural fixes

• Fix keyboard navigation issues in navigation menus
• Add captions to any video content
• Review and correct heading hierarchy throughout the site
• Add a simple accessibility statement page

If your website is built on WordPress, plugins like WP Accessibility Helper can address many issues without developer input. For custom-built sites, the fixes above require a developer but are straightforward for any competent developer to implement.

What If Your Website Was Built by a Page Builder?

Websites built using Elementor, Divi, Wix, Squarespace, or GoDaddy Website Builder tend to have worse baseline accessibility than hand-coded sites. These platforms generate bloated, inconsistent HTML that often fails accessibility standards by default.

This does not mean they cannot be made accessible — but it does mean the remediation work is harder, often requiring overriding the builder’s default output. In some cases, particularly for Wix and GoDaddy sites, the limitations of the platform make it impossible to fully meet WCAG AA without rebuilding on a different platform.

At Webgenix, every website we build is hand-coded in clean PHP or HTML — no page builders. This means accessibility best practices are implemented from the start rather than retrofitted, and the resulting code is cleaner, faster, and easier to audit.

A Note on the ‘Reasonable Adjustment’ Standard

The Equality Act’s requirement is “reasonable adjustments” — not perfection. A sole trader with a five-page WordPress site is held to a different standard than a national retailer. What matters is demonstrating a genuine effort to make your website usable for disabled visitors.

Practically, this means:

• Fixing the basic failures identified by free audit tools
• Not using colour alone to convey information
• Ensuring your contact form and any purchasing process is accessible
• Having an accessible way for disabled users to contact you if the website itself has limitations

A small Derby business that has made genuine efforts — fixed alt text, ensured form labels, checked contrast — is in a far stronger legal position than one that has done nothing, even if the site is not fully WCAG AA compliant in every respect.

Want a Website That Meets Accessibility Standards From Day One?

Every Webgenix website is hand-coded with accessibility built in — semantic HTML, proper alt text, keyboard navigation, contrast compliance, and form labels as standard. We also include a free accessibility audit as part of every new build.

If your existing Derby website has accessibility issues, we can audit and fix them, or rebuild it on a clean, accessible foundation.

Free quote: webgenix.co.uk/request-a-quote

Web design Derby: webgenix.co.uk/web-design-derby

Free website audit: webgenix.co.uk/free-website-audit-derby