By Steve Cadman, Co-Founder, TASK Agency Ltd
A website can look polished, carry a powerful case for support and still shut people out at the moment they need help. Charity website accessibility requirements are therefore not a technical afterthought. They affect whether someone can find a service, read safeguarding information, join a group, make a donation or tell you what they need.
For charities and mission-led organisations, accessibility is part of delivering on your purpose. It protects trust, widens your reach and makes better use of the budget you have worked hard to secure.
What are charity website accessibility requirements in the UK?
There is no single set of rules that applies in exactly the same way to every UK charity. Your legal duties depend on what your organisation does, who it serves and whether it carries out public functions. But the direction of travel is clear: digital services should not place disabled people at a substantial disadvantage.
Under the Equality Act 2010, service providers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. A charity website offering advice, events, memberships, donations or referrals can form part of that service. The Act does not prescribe one technical checklist for every charity. It does, however, mean that a website which cannot be used with a keyboard, screen reader or magnification software may create a real equality barrier.
If your organisation is a public sector body, or is delivering a public function on behalf of one, the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 may also apply. These regulations require relevant websites and mobile apps to meet an accessibility standard, publish an accessibility statement and provide a route for people to report problems or request information in an accessible format.
Not every charity falls within these regulations. A small independent charity generally may not, while a charity commissioned to deliver a public service could be in scope for aspects of its work. This is an area where the detail matters, so obtain legal advice where your status is unclear. Regardless of formal scope, the Equality Act and the practical responsibility to your communities remain highly relevant.
WCAG 2.2 AA: the practical benchmark
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, usually shortened to WCAG, are the recognised international standard used to assess website accessibility. WCAG 2.2 at level AA is the most useful target for a new charity website or significant rebuild.
The public sector regulations were originally framed around WCAG 2.1 AA. Yet designing to WCAG 2.2 AA where possible is a sensible, forward-looking approach. It addresses additional needs, including clearer focus indicators, accessible authentication and minimum target sizes for some interactive controls. A larger button or a more visible keyboard focus state may seem like a small design decision. For a person with limited dexterity, low vision or a cognitive impairment, it can determine whether a task is possible at all.
WCAG is built around four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust enough to work with assistive technology. That can sound abstract. In practice, it means people should be able to perceive information in more than one way, navigate without a mouse, understand what is being asked of them and use the site with the tools they rely on.
Conformance is valuable, but a pass against automated checks alone is not proof that a website works for real people. A donation journey can meet many technical criteria and still be confusing, time-limited or impossible to complete without support.
Where charity websites most often exclude people
Accessibility issues often appear in the pages with the greatest human consequence: contact forms, service finders, referral routes, crisis information, event booking and online donations. These are common problems to look for:
- Low-contrast text, especially pale copy on coloured backgrounds or text placed over photography.
- Navigation that only works on hover, uses unclear labels or traps keyboard users in menus and pop-ups.
- Images, icons and charts with missing or meaningless alternative text.
- Forms with placeholder text instead of visible labels, vague error messages or required fields identified by colour alone.
- PDFs used for essential information when the document cannot be read, searched, reflowed or navigated by assistive technology.
- Videos without accurate captions, transcripts where needed, or audio description when visual information carries the meaning.
The answer is not to remove every image, animation or PDF from your website. It is to make deliberate choices. A short campaign film with captions can communicate brilliantly. A complex annual report may still need to be available as a PDF, but its key findings should also appear as accessible HTML on the website. Good accessibility preserves the message while giving more people a fair chance to receive it.
Start with the journeys that matter most
Few charities have the capacity to rebuild every page at once. A proportionate plan is better than an overwhelming audit that sits untouched in a shared drive.
Begin with the journeys that affect safety, access and income. Can a person using only a keyboard find urgent support? Can a screen-reader user understand what your organisation does and contact the right team? Can someone with low vision complete a donation, sign up for an event or download essential information? Can a person with a learning disability follow the language and structure without being sent through three layers of organisational terminology?
Test these tasks on a mobile as well as a desktop. Many people access charity services on older phones, over limited data connections or in situations where concentration is difficult. Fast-loading pages, clear headings and plain-English copy help everyone, not only disabled visitors.
Combine automated checks with human testing
Automated tools are useful for spotting obvious issues such as missing page titles, empty links and some colour contrast failures. They cannot reliably judge whether alternative text is helpful, whether a heading structure makes sense, or whether a form error explains how to put something right.
Manual testing should include keyboard-only navigation, browser zoom at 200% and a screen-reader check of your priority journeys. Where possible, involve disabled people and people with direct experience of the barriers your service users face. Paid user testing is not a nice extra. It gives your organisation evidence that design decisions work beyond the assumptions of the project team.
If budget is limited, ask a small group to test a defined task rather than requesting general feedback on an entire website. A focused session on a referral form or donation process can reveal the highest-value changes quickly.
Build accessibility into content, design and governance
A compliant launch can become inaccessible within months if accessibility lives only with the developer. Charity teams update service pages, publish reports, add campaign assets and create event forms under pressure. The system needs to support them.
Use a WordPress theme and component library that produces clean, consistent markup. Make sure editors have fields and guidance for descriptive image text, meaningful link wording, headings and captions. Avoid giving people a blank canvas when a structured content block would prevent common errors.
Content standards matter just as much. Headings should describe the section that follows, rather than simply adding visual emphasis. Links should make sense out of context: “Read our housing support eligibility criteria” tells a visitor more than “Click here”. Acronyms, policy language and internal programme names should be explained before they are relied upon.
Also set clear ownership. Someone should review accessibility when new templates, plugins, payment journeys and third-party booking tools are introduced. Third-party systems are a frequent weak point. You may not control their code, but you do control whether to select them, how prominently to use them and whether an alternative route is available.
Publish an honest accessibility statement where required
If the public sector accessibility regulations apply, an accessibility statement is mandatory. It should explain the standard your website aims to meet, identify known issues, state any disproportionate burden decisions where relevant, describe accessible alternatives and tell users how to report a problem.
Even where a statement is not legally required, a concise accessibility page is a worthwhile act of transparency. Do not claim full compliance unless it has been properly assessed. Explain what you are doing, how people can contact you and how quickly they can expect a response. Trust is strengthened when organisations are candid about work still in progress.
Accessibility is service quality, not a final-stage check
The most effective accessibility work begins before colours, layouts and content blocks are approved. It asks who may need this service in a different format, what could stop them completing a task and what support should be available when technology fails.
That approach often improves fundraising, search visibility and user experience at the same time. Clearer language helps a first-time donor understand the impact of their gift. Logical page structure helps a busy commissioner find evidence. Captions make campaign video usable in a quiet waiting room. These outcomes are connected because they all stem from communication that respects people’s circumstances.
Every pound matters and every word has weight. Treat accessibility as part of how your charity reaches people, earns confidence and keeps its promise to the communities it exists to serve.
