Accessibility was easy to ignore five years ago. It's harder to ignore now.
In 2026, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) has come into force for most digital products serving EU users. The ADA continues to generate lawsuits against SaaS products in the US — including small and mid-sized companies. And beyond compliance, accessibility is increasingly a procurement requirement — enterprise buyers are asking for WCAG compliance documentation before signing contracts.
This guide covers what you actually need to know, what to check, and how to prioritise fixes.
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It's the international standard for web accessibility, published by the W3C.
WCAG 2.1 AA is the current legal benchmark in most jurisdictions. It organises requirements around four principles:
Perceivable — Users must be able to perceive all content. This covers things like image alt text, captions for video, and colour contrast.
Operable — Users must be able to operate all functionality. This means keyboard accessibility, no seizure-triggering content, enough time to complete tasks.
Understandable — Users must be able to understand content and interface. This covers readable text, predictable navigation, and error identification.
Robust — Content must work reliably with assistive technologies. This mainly means correctly structured HTML and ARIA attributes.
WCAG 2.2 (the current version) added additional success criteria around focus indicators and target sizes. If you're starting an accessibility audit today, test against WCAG 2.2 AA.
European Union: The European Accessibility Act (EAA) requires businesses offering digital products or services in the EU to comply with accessibility standards. The deadline for compliance was June 2025 for most businesses. Enforcement is now active.
United States: The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) has been interpreted by courts to cover digital products. While there's no single federal standard, courts have generally treated WCAG 2.1 AA as the benchmark. There were over 4,000 ADA website lawsuits filed in the US in 2023, a number that has continued to grow.
The practical bottom line: If you have B2B customers, enterprise buyers are increasingly asking for accessibility compliance as part of vendor assessment. If you have EU users, you have legal obligations. If you're a US-based product, the lawsuit risk is real and growing.
1. Missing form labels Input fields that rely only on placeholder text fail accessibility. When a screen reader user focuses on the field, it announces nothing useful. Fix: add a label element linked to each input.
2. Insufficient colour contrast The WCAG AA standard requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Many design teams use colour combinations that look fine visually but fail this standard. Check with the WebAIM Contrast Checker.
3. No keyboard navigation Every action that can be done with a mouse must be doable with a keyboard. Tab to navigate, Enter to activate, Escape to close. Many SaaS products break at custom dropdowns, date pickers, or modal dialogs.
4. Missing alt text on images Images that convey information need descriptive alt text. Decorative images should have empty alt attributes so screen readers skip them. Both are commonly wrong.
5. Focus indicators removed Many designers remove the browser's default focus ring (the blue outline around focused elements) for aesthetic reasons. This makes keyboard navigation invisible for users who need it. Restore the focus ring — or replace it with a custom one that's equally visible.
6. Poor heading structure Screen reader users navigate pages by heading structure. Skipping heading levels (H1 → H3, no H2) or using headings for visual sizing rather than semantic structure makes this impossible.
7. Inaccessible modal dialogs Modals are common and commonly broken. When a modal opens, focus should move to it. Pressing Escape should close it. Focus should be trapped inside until it's closed. Tab should not go behind the modal to the page underneath.
8. Error messages that don't identify the problem "Something went wrong" and "Invalid input" fail accessibility. Error messages must identify the specific field with the error and describe what needs to be corrected.
9. Timeout sessions without warning If your product times out user sessions, users must be warned before the timeout occurs and given the opportunity to extend it.
10. PDFs that aren't tagged If your product generates PDFs (audit reports, invoices, exports), they need to be tagged for accessibility. Untagged PDFs are essentially unreadable for screen reader users.
Automated testing (start here): Run your product through these free tools:
Automated tools catch maybe 30–40% of WCAG issues. They're a good starting point but not a complete audit.
Manual testing (essential):
Focus first on:
Lower priority (do these, but they can wait):
Accessibility overlay tools (widgets you add to a page that claim to "fix" accessibility) are not a solution. They've been widely criticised by the accessibility community and have not been accepted as compliance proof in legal cases. Don't rely on them.
Actual accessibility requires fixing the underlying code.
UXAuditPro includes an accessibility dimension in every audit report — scored and with specific findings. Run a free audit to see where your product stands. It won't replace a full WCAG audit, but it's a fast way to surface the most common issues.
Related reading: UX audit checklist — 47 things to check before your next launch
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