Web accessibility isn’t optional anymore. Legal requirements are tightening, lawsuits are increasing, and publishers who’ve ignored accessibility are running out of time.

This isn’t about perfection. It’s about meeting baseline standards and demonstrating good faith effort.

The Legal Requirement

WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the effective standard in Australia. Government sites must comply. Commercial sites aren’t explicitly required under most laws, but that’s changing.

Discrimination law covers digital accessibility. If your website isn’t accessible to people with disabilities, you may be violating anti-discrimination statutes.

Critical Issues to Fix First

Images without alt text are the most common violation. Every meaningful image needs descriptive alternative text that conveys the content and context.

Decorative images should have empty alt attributes (alt="") so screen readers skip them. Don’t write “decorative image” or similar, just leave it empty.

Color contrast failures are extremely common. Text needs sufficient contrast against backgrounds. Small text requires higher contrast than large text.

Tools like WebAIM’s contrast checker make this easy to verify. Many design choices that look elegant fail contrast requirements.

Keyboard navigation must work throughout your site. Users who can’t use a mouse need to access all content and functionality via keyboard.

Tab through your entire site without touching the mouse. If you can’t reach something or the focus indicator disappears, that’s a problem.

Form accessibility requires proper labels, error messages, and instructions. Screen reader users need to understand what each field requires.

Video Requirements

All video content needs captions. Auto-generated captions are better than nothing but they need human review and correction.

Audio descriptions for video content aren’t required at Level AA but they’re required at Level AAA and they’re genuinely helpful.

Transcripts provide another way to access video content and they help SEO. They require effort but they’re worth it.

Heading Structure

Proper heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3) helps screen reader users navigate content. Many publishers use headings purely for visual styling, breaking semantic structure.

Each page should have one H1. H2s should be primary sections. H3s should be subsections within H2s. Don’t skip levels.

Link Text

“Click here” and “read more” are bad link text. Screen reader users navigate by links, and these provide no context.

Good link text describes the destination: “Read our accessibility guide” instead of “Click here.”

CMS Accessibility

Your content management system either helps or hurts accessibility. WordPress has decent accessibility support but themes and plugins often break it.

Many page builders and visual editors produce inaccessible code. WYSIWYG editors often strip semantic HTML in favor of visual styling.

Testing Tools

Automated testing catches 30-40% of accessibility issues. Tools like axe, WAVE, or Lighthouse are essential but not sufficient.

Manual testing is necessary. Navigate your site with keyboard only. Use a screen reader (NVDA on Windows, VoiceOver on Mac). Watch users with disabilities actually use your site.

Common Publisher Problems

Image-heavy layouts without adequate text alternatives. Fashion magazines and photography publications are particularly guilty.

Interactive features that only work with mouse. Quizzes, galleries, and interactive graphics often fail keyboard accessibility.

Video players with inaccessible controls. Many custom video players don’t work with keyboard or screen readers.

PDFs that aren’t properly tagged. Magazine PDFs are usually completely inaccessible to screen readers.

Remediation Priority

Fix critical issues first: missing alt text, color contrast, keyboard navigation, form labels.

Address widespread issues next: heading structure, link text, video captions.

Handle edge cases and refinements after baseline compliance is achieved.

Documentation

Maintain an accessibility statement on your website. Explain your commitment to accessibility, what standards you follow, and how users can report issues.

This demonstrates good faith and provides protection if compliance isn’t perfect.

Ongoing Maintenance

Accessibility isn’t one-time work. New content needs to meet accessibility standards. New features need accessibility testing.

Build accessibility into your workflow: content creation guidelines, editorial checklists, QA processes.

Training Needs

Content creators need basic accessibility training. They should understand how to write alt text, use proper heading structure, and create accessible links.

Developers need deeper technical knowledge of WCAG requirements and implementation techniques.

Editors need to check accessibility as part of quality control before content goes live.

Cost Implications

Initial accessibility audit and remediation might cost $10,000-$50,000 depending on site size and issue severity.

Ongoing maintenance is mostly workflow and training, not expensive technology.

The cost of not addressing accessibility is increasing: legal risk, reduced audience reach, reputational damage.

Third-Party Content

Advertisements, embedded widgets, and third-party content can introduce accessibility violations you don’t control.

You’re still responsible for the overall accessibility of your site. Choose accessible third-party tools when possible and document issues you can’t control.

The Business Case

Accessible content reaches more people. That includes people with disabilities, but also users with temporary impairments, older users, and users in challenging conditions.

Accessible content tends to be better structured, which helps SEO, readability, and content reuse.

Getting ahead of compliance requirements is cheaper than responding to complaints or lawsuits.

Resources

WebAIM has excellent practical guides. W3C’s WCAG documentation is authoritative but dense. A11y Project provides practical tutorials.

Accessibility consultants can help with audits and remediation if you don’t have internal expertise.

This isn’t optional anymore. Publishers need to address accessibility now, not later when legal pressure increases.