Web Accessibility, SEO and WCAG: Why We Still Take It Seriously

Every website has one job: to let people do what they came to do, whether that's booking an appointment, paying a bill, buying a product or finding a phone number. If someone can't do that because of how the site was built, the site has failed them, however good it looks. That is what web accessibility is about.

At Cirrus Design Studio we try, wherever we can, to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) so that people of any background, ability or circumstance can use the websites and systems we build as easily as possible. This article explains what WCAG is, where it came from, why it matters for your business and your search rankings, and what we do about it in practice.

What is web accessibility?

Web accessibility means designing and building websites so that everyone can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with them. That includes people who:

• are blind or partially sighted and use screen readers or screen magnifiers
• are colour blind or have low contrast sensitivity
• are deaf or hard of hearing
• have motor impairments and use a keyboard, switch device or voice control instead of a mouse
• have cognitive or learning difficulties, dyslexia or memory impairments
• are older and finding small text or fiddly controls harder to use
• have a temporary impairment, such as a broken arm, or a situational one, such as bright sunlight on a phone screen or a slow mobile connection

In the UK, around one in four people has a disability. Add older users and people with temporary or situational limitations and accessibility affects a large share of any website's visitors, not a small minority.

A brief history of WCAG

The early web (1990s)

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, he described its power as its universality: access by everyone regardless of disability. In practice, the early commercial web quickly filled up with image-only navigation, table-based layouts, missing text alternatives and early plug-ins that locked many users out.

In 1997 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) launched the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) to tackle this. Around the same time, laws began to follow. In the UK the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 set a duty on service providers not to discriminate against disabled people, a duty later understood to cover websites. In the United States, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act was strengthened in 1998 to cover federal electronic and information technology.

WCAG 1.0 (1999)

The first Web Content Accessibility Guidelines were published as a W3C Recommendation in May 1999. WCAG 1.0 set out 14 guidelines with checkpoints grouped into three priority levels, which gave us the familiar conformance ratings of A, AA and AAA. Much of it was tied to the technology of the time: HTML, tables and frames.

Electronic government and the 2005 target

In the UK, the government set a target for all public services to be available electronically by 2005. Local authorities across the country worked through their Implementing Electronic Government programmes to bring council services online, from paying council tax and reporting missed bin collections to planning applications and library services.

Accessibility was an important part of that work. Councils serve everyone in their area, including many of the people most likely to be excluded by a badly built website. Guidance such as PAS 78 (2006) on commissioning accessible websites followed, and accessibility became a standard expectation for public sector sites.

WCAG 2.0 (2008)

By the mid-2000s the web had moved on: CSS layouts, JavaScript and AJAX-driven pages were everywhere. WCAG 2.0, published in December 2008, was written to be technology-neutral and testable. It introduced the four principles that still sit at the heart of accessibility today, known by the acronym POUR:

• Perceivable: information must be presentable in ways users can perceive (for example, text alternatives for images, captions for video, sufficient colour contrast).
• Operable: interface components must be usable (for example, everything works with a keyboard, users have enough time, nothing flashes in a way that could cause seizures).
• Understandable: content and operation must be clear (for example, readable text, predictable behaviour, helpful error messages).
• Robust: content must work reliably with a wide range of browsers and assistive technologies, now and in the future.

WCAG 2.0 was later adopted as the international standard ISO/IEC 40500:2012. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 replaced the Disability Discrimination Act and continued the duty to make reasonable adjustments, including online, and BS 8878 (2010) gave organisations a code of practice for web accessibility.

WCAG 2.1 (2018)

Smartphones changed how people use the web, and WCAG 2.1, published in June 2018, added 17 new success criteria to reflect that. These covered mobile and touch use, people with low vision and people with cognitive and learning disabilities: things like content reflowing at high zoom without horizontal scrolling, text spacing, orientation, and the contrast of buttons and icons as well as text.

That same year, the UK introduced the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018, requiring public sector websites and apps to meet WCAG 2.1 AA and publish an accessibility statement.

WCAG 2.2 (2023)

WCAG 2.2, published in October 2023, added nine further success criteria. They include making sure keyboard focus is never hidden behind sticky headers or pop-ups, minimum target sizes for buttons and links, alternatives to drag-and-drop, not asking users to re-enter information they've already given, and accessible authentication that doesn't rely on memory tests or puzzles. One older criterion about HTML parsing was retired because modern browsers and assistive technology now handle it reliably.

Today and beyond

The European Accessibility Act began applying in June 2025, extending accessibility requirements to many private-sector products and services sold in the EU, including e-commerce, banking and transport. Meanwhile, the W3C is developing WCAG 3.0, a more flexible model intended to cover a wider range of disabilities and digital products. It is still a working draft, and WCAG 2.2 AA remains the benchmark most organisations work to.

Our own roots in accessibility

Accessibility isn't something we picked up recently. Our director of technology, Derek Johnson, was heavily involved in local government's implementation of electronic government for the 2005 target. While councils raced to put services online, Derek's pet project was web accessibility: making sure local authority services met the accessibility guidelines online, so that residents who relied on assistive technology, or who simply found computers difficult, weren't left behind as services moved to the web.

The same thinking applies when we carry out legacy system conversion: replacing an ageing system is the ideal moment to make it accessible to everyone who uses it.

That experience shaped how we work. Putting a service online only counts if everyone who needs it can use it, and that principle has stayed with Derek and with Cirrus Design Studio ever since.

Has accessibility been forgotten?

Honestly, in many cases, yes.

Over the last decade much of the web has drifted away from the principles that were championed so strongly in the 2000s. Accessibility has often been pushed aside in favour of flashy effects: autoplaying video backgrounds, scroll-jacking animations, low-contrast "minimalist" text, custom controls that only work with a mouse, and cookie banners and pop-ups that trap keyboard users. These can look impressive in a design review, yet they make life harder for real people trying to get something done.

Large-scale annual audits of the world's most popular home pages, such as the WebAIM Million, consistently find detectable WCAG failures on well over 90% of them. The most common problems are not complicated: low-contrast text, images without alternative text, empty links and buttons, missing form labels and missing page language. Nearly all of them are easy to avoid when accessibility is considered from the start.

The good news: modern browsers have helped

There is real progress. Modern browsers and operating systems have done a lot to make the web easier to use for people with particular requirements:

• Zoom and text resizing work far better than they used to, especially on responsive sites that reflow properly.
• Reader modes strip away clutter and present content in a clean, readable layout.
• Dark mode, high contrast and forced colours settings let users choose the colours that work for them, and well-built sites respect those choices.
• Reduced motion settings let people who experience dizziness or nausea from animation switch it off, and sites can detect and honour that preference.
• Built-in screen readers and voice control (such as VoiceOver, TalkBack, Narrator and Voice Control) now ship free with mainstream devices.
• Live captions and translation are increasingly built into browsers and operating systems.
• Native HTML elements such as buttons, form controls and dialogs come with accessibility built in, provided developers use them rather than reinventing them.

Browsers can only do so much, though. If a site is built with meaningless markup, unlabelled controls or content locked inside images, no browser feature can fully fix it. The foundations still have to be right.

Accessibility and SEO go hand in hand

Accessibility also makes good business sense, because much of what makes a site accessible also helps it rank well in search engines, which is why it sits at the heart of our Google Partner digital marketing and SEO work. Search engine crawlers, like screen readers, rely on clean, well-structured content to understand a page.

How accessibility practices support SEO

Accessibility practice	SEO benefit
Descriptive alternative text for images	Helps images appear in image search and gives search engines context
Logical heading structure (H1, H2, H3)	Helps search engines understand topics and page hierarchy
Descriptive link text instead of "click here"	Gives clear signals about the page being linked to
Captions and transcripts for video and audio	Turns media into indexable text
Semantic HTML and correct page language	Makes content easier to parse and match to the right audience
Fast, responsive, mobile-friendly layouts	Supports Core Web Vitals and mobile-first indexing
Clear, readable copy	Keeps visitors on the page longer and lowers bounce rates

An accessible site reaches more people, keeps them engaged for longer and gives search engines a clearer picture of what you offer. It also reduces legal risk under the Equality Act 2010 and, for businesses trading into Europe, the European Accessibility Act.

How Cirrus Design Studio puts this into practice

On every website design and development project, every bespoke business system and every Hydra CMS build, we aim to meet WCAG 2.2 at level AA wherever possible. Where a particular requirement or third-party component makes full conformance difficult, we tell you and look for the most accessible alternative. In practice, that means we:

• Use semantic HTML first, with proper headings, landmarks, lists, buttons and form labels, so assistive technology understands every page.
• Check colour contrast for text, icons and interactive elements against WCAG requirements, without sacrificing your brand.
• Make everything keyboard accessible, with clear, visible focus indicators and logical tab order.
• Write meaningful alternative text for images, and mark decorative images so screen readers skip them.
• Respect user preferences such as reduced motion, dark mode and browser zoom, and make sure layouts reflow at 400% zoom.
• Build accessible forms with clear labels, helpful instructions and error messages that explain how to fix the problem.
• Size touch targets generously so buttons and links are easy to use on phones and for people with limited dexterity.
• Use motion and effects with restraint, so animation supports the content rather than getting in the way of it.
• Test with real tools: automated checkers, manual keyboard testing and screen readers, because automated tools alone catch only a portion of issues.
• Help you keep it accessible, with guidance for your team on adding content, writing alt text and structuring pages once the site is live.

We also help clients write and publish accessibility statements, which public sector organisations are legally required to provide and which any organisation can use to show its commitment.

Web accessibility FAQs

Our commitment to you

We believe good design is design that works for everyone. A beautiful website that excludes part of its audience isn't finished. Accessibility has been part of our approach since Derek's work bringing council services online, and it remains part of every project we take on today.

If you'd like us to review your existing website for accessibility and SEO issues, or you're planning a new site and want to make sure it's built inclusively from day one, get in touch with Cirrus Design Studio. We'll be happy to talk it through.