Accessibility became an obligation. What that means for company websites

For years, web accessibility was treated as a courtesy towards a minority of users. Since June 2025 it has been an obligation for many commercial websites — the European Accessibility Act covers e-commerce, banking, transport and electronic communications among others.

For most companies this is not cause for panic. It is a reason to check four things that are wrong almost everywhere.

Text contrast

The most common failure is light grey text on white. It looks airy and nobody complains, because the people who cannot read it leave without a word.

The requirement is 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text. It takes a minute to measure and the fix is one value in a stylesheet. It is worth checking brand colours too — many corporate shades fail as text on white.

Keyboard operation

Try completing your own checkout form using only the tab key. If you cannot tell where you are because no focus ring appears, that is a defect. And it is usually a deliberate one: outline: none is among the most copied lines on the internet.

Form field labels

A field described only by grey text inside it fails twice. The label disappears the moment you start typing, and a screen reader may not announce it at all. A real label bound to the field is a few characters more.

Heading hierarchy

Headings are not font sizes; they are document structure. Skipping from level one to level three because it fitted better breaks navigation for anyone who does not read the page with their eyes.

Why do it even if the law does not apply to you

All four points happen to be exactly what search engines reward. Sufficient contrast, comprehensible structure and usable forms are not a favour to a minority — they are the conditions for the site to work for anyone, including the robot indexing it.