Is Your Website Accessible?

Does your website need to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? If so, we know WCAG, and we can help.

What is WCAG?

“WCAG” is the acronym for “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines”. WCAG 2.2 is the current set of requirements that allows people with disabilities to use websites. There are three levels of conformance (i.e. compliance) with WCAG 2.2: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA.

It’s Now a National Standard

In March 2024, the WA Government mandated that all government agencies, statutory authorities and government trading enterprises meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA. Other states, including Victoria, have similar requirements.

Since then the bar has moved further. In April 2025, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) issued new guidelines confirming WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the national minimum standard under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). This applies to public-facing digital services across government AND private business, not just WA agencies. The guidelines also extend obligations to apps, SaaS platforms, and AI-driven tools.

Sources: AHRC guidelines (2025) and WA Government Accessibility and Inclusivity Standard.

How Much Does It Cost?

New Websites

If you are planning a new website, it is a great idea to make it compliant with WCAG 2.2. It takes extra time for us to design and build a WCAG compliant website, and it also takes extra time for the website owner (or us, if we do it) to prepare the content for the site.

Typically we find that building a new website to be compliant with WCAG Level A adds around 20% to 25% to our estimated hours for the project. Compliance with Level AA adds 30% to 40% extra hours, whilst Level AAA (which can be very hard to achieve and maintain) can add 50% or more to the estimated hours for the project.

Existing Websites

For existing websites that need to be made WCAG compliant, we start with a detailed check of the existing site to identify the non-compliant errors that need to be fixed to achieve the desired level of compliance (A, AA or AAA).

Then we identify what needs to be done to remediate and fix the website. This may include minor design changes or potentially a new design with a colour scheme that provides greater colour contrast for vision-impaired users. The content may be compliant as it is, or it may need minor or major rework to provide great accessibility for screen readers.

Once we know what needs to be done to achieve compliance, we can provide an estimate of the work involved.

At Concise Digital, we offer a wide range of web development services, and we’re particularly skilled in achieving conformance to WCAG accessibility guidelines as part of a well-designed, content-rich and functional website.

Created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the globally recognised Web Content Accessibility Guidelines provide standards that aim to make the web accessible for everybody, including people with a variety of disabilities — visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, or neurological.

Whether your website platform is Shopify, WordPress, PrestaShop, Webflow, or Laravel, we can help you enhance your current website or build you a new website to meet WCAG standards.

Want to know how well your website meets WCAG guidelines? You can use one of the many accessibility checking tools out there, but unfortunately some of these online checkers can give confusing and unhelpful results.

Discovering WCAG issues is one thing, resolving them is another. We can guide you step-by-step through the necessary fixes and recommend the best tools to get you conforming to the standards. If these fixes require technical changes and modifications to your site (which is often the case), then our team can estimate the time involved and get the work done for you.

If you’re building a new website from the ground up and you want it to meet WCAG guidelines, we offer custom website development tailored to your chosen WCAG conformance level; whether that is WCAG Level A, Level AA, or Level AAA.

Experience & Expertise

At Concise Digital, we have been building WCAG accessible websites for many years. We know how to achieve conformance technically with the website design and development, and we know how to advise our clients to ensure the content on the site conforms to WCAG requirements.

No Long Term Lock-in Contracts

Concise Digital has no long-term lock-in contracts or tricky ‘Terms and Conditions’ to lock you in. You can move from us at any time, although we’re pleased to say most clients choose to work with us for years.

Freedom to Move

Our websites are built using versatile open-source software. Should you ever decide to move on, another qualified developer can easily modify your site.

Affordable & Transparent

Typically, we work on estimates, and we do not do fixed-price work. Fixed price work can be unfair as it always requires us to add extra allowances for project contingencies which may never happen. We think giving you a range of estimated hours and then only charging for actual hours is a much fairer approach.

24/7 Support

At Concise Digital, we have our own in-house hosting infrastructure support team who are available 24/7 to quickly troubleshoot any hosting problems that may occur.

Accessible & Legal

The obvious key benefit of conforming to WCAG is to ensure your business or organisation meets its legal requirements under Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities.

If you had a physical shop, the law would require a lift or wheelchair ramp for customers, rather than just stairs. Similarly for your website: making your content accessible to people with disabilities isn’t just a nice thing to do. It’s a legal requirement, and enforcement is only growing, with a number of high-profile legal cases already on record.

Open New Markets

5.5 million Australians have some form of disability according to the ABS’s 2022 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers. Making your website conform to WCAG can help broaden the reach of your business to include this significant and growing portion of the population commercially, as more people can access your website. This can only be beneficial for your business.

Enhance User Experience

WCAG goes beyond accessibility; it significantly contributes to improving the overall user experience. By implementing WCAG features, your website not only becomes more accessible but most WCAG conforming websites are often more intuitive and user-friendly. This improves the visitor experience for everyone, leading to higher conversion rates, not just for those with disabilities.

Improve Search Engine Performance

Did you know that many features that make a website accessible also improve its search engine performance? Structured headings, clear navigation, and descriptive link texts are good for accessibility, and they’re also good for SEO.

The Pragmatic Bottom Line on Web Accessibility

Even with all the good reasons to do it, including the legal requirements, a lot of businesses still do not have WCAG-compliant accessible websites.

Some businesses do not see it as a priority, while others do not want to spend the extra budget. It takes longer to build an accessible website, especially if the site has different types of content and complex business functionality.

Conformance to at least Level AA is now usually required for websites owned by government bodies, and increasingly expected of private businesses too following the AHRC’s 2025 guidance. An organisation needing to meet WCAG Level AA must be prepared and able to allocate a substantially larger budget, both initially and for ongoing content development and maintenance.

In our experience, very few organisations, including government bodies, have websites built to fully meet Level AAA compliance. WCAG Level AAA websites have a much higher cost to build, and much higher ongoing costs for content creation and maintenance, as all content must meet the Level AAA standard.

Websites may have parts of their content comply to different levels. Typically, the conformance level is explained in an Accessibility Statement page on the website. This statement is optional, but it is good practice for the website owner to explain the level of conformance to the specific version of WCAG guidelines that was achieved at a specific date.

WCAG Resources

Here are some handy resources to learn more about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Please call or contact us to have a chat with one of our specialist team.

WCAG accessibility