If you’ve been asked to confirm your website meets WCAG accessibility standards, whether by a government client, a funding body, or a tender document, you’ve probably had the same reaction most people do: what exactly are they asking for, and do we actually meet them?
You’re not alone. WCAG compliance has quietly become one of the most common requirements in government and not-for-profit contracts, and most business owners have never had a reason to look into it until someone asks.
In this post, we’ll explain what WCAG 2.2 actually is, who’s expected to meet it, what it looks like on a real website, and how to check where you stand.
What Is WCAG, Actually?
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, a set of technical standards published by the W3C that define what makes a website usable by people with disabilities. This includes people who are blind or have low vision, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people with motor impairments who can’t use a mouse, and people with cognitive or learning disabilities.
The current version is WCAG 2.2, released in 2023. It’s organised into four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Each principle has specific, testable criteria attached to it, things like colour contrast ratios, keyboard navigation, and text alternatives for images.
Compliance is measured in levels: A, AA, and AAA, with AA being the level most people mean when they say “WCAG compliant.” AAA is a higher bar that’s rarely required outside specialist contexts.
Who Actually Has to Comply?
This is the part most people get wrong. WCAG 2.2 AA isn’t a law in Australia, but it’s become the default requirement in many places where it matters commercially.
Australian Government agencies are expected to meet WCAG 2.2 AA across their digital services, and this expectation flows down through contracts and tenders. If you’re building or maintaining a website for a government department, a council, or an organisation that receives government funding, accessibility compliance is often written into the contract as a condition, not a suggestion. Fail to meet it, and you can lose the tender or the funding, regardless of whether anyone has ever complained about your site.
That’s a different kind of pressure than legal risk. It’s closer to a technical spec you either meet or don’t. And it’s why we see WCAG requirements turn up most often in not-for-profit, education, health, and local government work, sectors where public funding and public accountability go hand in hand.
Beyond government-linked work, accessibility isn’t strictly mandated for every small business, but it’s worth treating as good practice rather than an edge case. An accessible site is generally a more usable site for everyone, and it tends to overlap with the same fundamentals that support good SEO: clear structure, sensible headings, and content that’s easy to parse.
What Does This Actually Look Like on a Website?
Most of WCAG 2.2 AA comes down to a handful of practical, unglamorous fixes. None of it requires rebuilding your site from scratch.
Text needs enough contrast against its background to be readable, particularly for anyone with low vision. Every image that conveys information needs alt text, a short written description that screen readers can announce. Anyone using only a keyboard, without a mouse or touchpad, needs to be able to reach and use every interactive element on the page, and it needs to be visible where their focus currently is.
WCAG 2.2 also added a few new requirements worth knowing about. Interactive elements like buttons and links now need to be a minimum size so they’re easier to tap accurately on a touchscreen. Anything that relies on dragging, like a slider, needs a non-drag alternative, since dragging is difficult or impossible for people with certain motor conditions.
None of these are exotic requirements. Most come from good, disciplined front-end development. The gap usually isn’t a lack of willingness; it’s that nobody checked.
What Happens If My Website Isn’t Accessible?
For government-linked work, the immediate consequence is usually procurement, not litigation: you don’t meet the spec, so you don’t win or keep the contract. Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act technically applies to all businesses, not just government-linked ones, and there have been cases where inaccessible websites led to formal complaints. In practice, enforcement against small businesses outside government or funded work is rare, so this sits closer to a reputational and usability issue than an active legal threat for most.
The more common cost is quieter: visitors who can’t use your site properly simply leave, and you never find out why.
A Quick Self-Check
You don’t need a full accessibility audit to get a rough sense of where you stand. Try these:
If more than one or two of these fail, it’s worth a proper look before it becomes a problem in a tender or a client audit.
If you’re bidding on government or not-for-profit work and need to know where your current site actually stands, or you’re planning a rebuild and want accessibility handled properly from the start, we’re happy to run through it with you. No pitch, just a straight answer.
