WCAG is an acronym that comes up in conversations about websites and rarely gets properly explained. If someone from your web agency mentioned it and you nodded along, here is what it actually means and why it is relevant to your charity.
What WCAG is
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. They are a set of technical standards produced by the W3C, the international body that sets the rules for how the web works.
The guidelines exist to make websites usable by people with disabilities. That includes people with visual impairments who use screen readers, people with motor difficulties who cannot use a mouse, people with hearing impairments who need captions on videos, and people with cognitive differences who need content presented clearly and consistently.
There are three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA. Level AA is the standard most organisations aim for. It is also the level referenced in UK law for public sector bodies, and the one worth holding any web agency to.
What UK law actually says
The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 require public sector organisations to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Most charities are not technically public sector bodies, so these regulations do not apply directly.
However, the Equality Act 2010 does apply to charities. It requires organisations to make reasonable adjustments to ensure their services are accessible to people with disabilities. A website that cannot be used by someone who relies on a screen reader, or that has no captions on video content for a deaf visitor, may constitute a failure to make a reasonable adjustment.
There is no simple legal mechanism that will result in your charity being taken to court next week over your website. But the duty to make reasonable adjustments is real, and ignoring accessibility is not a risk-free position. The word "reasonable" is doing important work in that sentence. For a charity with any budget at all, building an accessible website is a reasonable thing to do.
The argument that matters more
The legal position matters. But for most charities, there is a more direct reason to care about accessibility.
Roughly one in five people in the UK has a disability of some kind. That number rises significantly among older populations. The people your charity serves are more likely than average to include people with accessibility needs: people who are elderly, people with physical or cognitive disabilities, people in difficult circumstances who may be using an older device or assistive technology.
A website that does not work for them is not doing its job. That is not a compliance issue. It is a mission issue.
What poor accessibility actually looks like in practice
Most accessibility failures are not dramatic. They accumulate quietly in the details. Here are the ones that come up most often.
Colour contrast. Text needs to be sufficiently dark against its background for people with low vision to read it comfortably. Light grey text on a white background is a common failure. So is yellow or pale green text on white. Good contrast ratios are straightforward to achieve when they are designed in from the start and much more expensive to fix after the fact.
Alt text on images. Every image on a website should have a text description that a screen reader can read aloud. Not "image01.jpg" or a blank field. A meaningful description of what the image shows. A photograph of a support worker with a service user needs alt text that describes the scene, not just "photo."
Keyboard navigation. Some people cannot use a mouse. Everything on your site should be reachable using a keyboard alone: menus, forms, links, buttons. This sounds simple and usually is for basic content, but contact forms and custom dropdown menus frequently break it. If you cannot tab through your contact form without a mouse, someone cannot complete it without a mouse either.
Form labels. Every form field needs a visible label that describes what goes in it. Placeholder text inside the field does not count as a label. When the placeholder disappears as soon as someone starts typing, a person using a screen reader may no longer know what the field is asking for. This is one of the most common failures on charity contact pages.
Heading structure. Screen readers use headings to help users navigate a page, in the same way that sighted users scan a page by looking at the bigger text. A page with multiple H1 headings, or heading levels that jump from H2 to H4, does not have a structure that assists navigation. This is easy to get right and easy to get wrong without thinking about it.
Video captions. If your charity produces video content, it should be captioned. YouTube's automatic captions are better than nothing but not accurate enough to rely on. Deaf visitors and people watching in a noisy environment both benefit from proper captions. So does anyone who watches without sound, which is a substantial proportion of social media viewers.
How to check where your site stands
There are free automated tools that will give you a baseline check. WAVE (wave.webaim.org) and Google Lighthouse, which is built into Chrome's developer tools, are the most commonly used and will surface the most obvious issues.
Automated checks will not find everything. A screen reader user may still find your site confusing to use even if it passes an automated test. But for a quick picture of where the obvious problems are, running WAVE on your most important pages takes ten minutes and costs nothing.
If you want a thorough answer, a manual audit by someone who tests with assistive technology regularly is the most reliable way to find out where you actually stand.
What to ask when commissioning a website
If you are briefing an agency or freelancer to build or redesign your website, these three questions will tell you a lot about how seriously they take this.
- Does the finished site meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA?
- How is that verified? Is it tested with screen readers, or only with automated tools?
- What do we need to do to maintain accessibility as we add content over time?
A competent agency will have clear, specific answers. An agency that treats the question as a low priority, or says accessibility will "add cost" without being able to say what that cost covers, is worth being cautious about. Accessibility should not be a line item at the end of a proposal. It should be how the site is built.
One practical step you can take today
If you are not sure where your current website stands, open WAVE and run it on your homepage and your contact page. Note what it flags.
You do not need to fix everything at once. But knowing what is there is better than not knowing. If you are planning a new website or a redesign, share this article with whoever is building it and ask them what their approach is. The answer will tell you a lot.
Accessibility ensures people can use your site. The free Charity Safety Content Audit checks whether they can find what they need: crisis contacts, referral forms, service information. A site can pass WAVE and still bury the things that matter most. Seven questions, under three minutes.
Take the free audit →