UK website accessibility law, for public bodies and businesses

The public sector regulations

The regulations (SI 2018/952) cover the websites and mobile apps of public sector bodies: central and local government and bodies governed by public law. Regulation 4 leaves out public service broadcasters, non-governmental organisations unless they provide essential services or services for disabled people, and schools and nurseries except for their essential online administration.

• The standard. Since 26 October 2022 a site is presumed to conform when it meets WCAG Level A and AA "as amended from time to time" (regulation 9, as amended by SI 2022/1097, which replaced the reference to EN 301 549). GOV.UK's guidance names WCAG 2.2 AA, and the Government Digital Service has monitored against WCAG 2.2 since October 2024.
• Deadlines (regulation 5): all passed. New websites from 23 September 2019, all other websites from 23 September 2020, and mobile apps from 23 June 2021.
• An accessibility statement (regulation 8) following the model, kept under regular review, listing the content that is not accessible and why, with a contact route and a link to the enforcement procedure. GOV.UK publishes a sample statement.
• Disproportionate burden (regulation 7): a body may claim it only after assessing its size, resources and nature against the costs and benefits, and must explain it in the statement.

Monitoring and enforcement

The Government Digital Service tests public sector sites and apps on behalf of the government. The monitoring duty in regulation 10 moved from the Minister for the Cabinet Office to the Secretary of State on 3 June 2025 (SI 2025/557). Under regulation 14 the Secretary of State can give a body 28 days to fix its statement, and must publish the name of a body whose failure is upheld.

Enforcement goes through equality law. Regulation 12 treats a failure to meet the accessibility requirement as a failure to make a reasonable adjustment, enforced by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in England, Scotland and Wales and the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (regulation 11).

The latest monitoring report, published on 17 December 2024 and covering January 2022 to September 2024, records 1,151 simplified tests, 52 detailed audits and 21 app audits. They found 29,787 accessibility issues, of which 16,482 (55.3%) were fixed. The EHRC wrote to public bodies referred to it and secured compliance with 66 of 93.

The Equality Act 2010, for businesses

There is no UK law that sets a technical standard for private websites. Instead, the Equality Act places a duty to make reasonable adjustments on anyone providing a service to the public, "for payment or not" (sections 20 and 29). The duty is owed to disabled people generally, so it is anticipatory: a business must plan for it before a disabled customer arrives. It does not require changing the fundamental nature of the service (Schedule 2).

The EHRC's code of practice for services, in force since 5 August 2026, states that the obligation applies to services provided on a website, and courts must take the code into account. A disabled person can bring a claim in the county court, or the sheriff court in Scotland (section 114), normally within six months (section 118), and damages can include compensation for injured feelings (section 119). Northern Ireland is covered by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 instead.

The Act does not name WCAG, but it is the benchmark a court or the EHRC is likely to reach for, and GOV.UK uses WCAG 2.2 AA for the public sector. The UK has no equivalent of the EU's European Accessibility Act; a UK business that sells services it covers to consumers in the EU should read that page too.

What an automated scan can tell you

A scan cannot show that a site conforms, and it cannot write the parts of a statement only you know. What it does is test the WCAG 2.2 criteria that can be measured on every page and every scan, and list the ones it could not test, so the "non-accessible content" section of a statement starts from evidence rather than guesswork.

Accessibility Pro checks against WCAG 2.2 Level AA by default, the same version GDS monitors. On the Team plan the Compliance tab drafts an accessibility statement from the scan. See the compliance reporting overview