Accessibility work in the public sector often begins as a compliance exercise and a search for something that can be installed to make the problem go away. There is no such thing. The overlay widgets that promise it do not deliver it, and in several jurisdictions their presence has featured in complaints rather than preventing them.
The actual work is unglamorous, largely structural, and mostly done at build time.
The four principles, briefly
WCAG organises everything under four headings. Content must be perceivable, interface components operable, information understandable, and the whole thing robust enough for assistive technology to interpret.
Conformance is graded A, AA and AAA. AA is the level nearly all public sector obligations reference. AAA is not generally expected across a whole site.
The failures that recur
Insufficient colour contrast. The most common failure by a wide margin. AA requires a ratio of 4.5 to 1 for normal text, 3 to 1 for large text. Light grey placeholder text and pale labels on white fail routinely. This is measurable rather than a matter of opinion, and it is cheap to fix at design time.
Images without meaningful alternative text. Not “image1.jpg” and not a keyword list. What the image conveys. Decorative images should carry empty alt text so screen readers skip them, which is a distinct thing from omitting the attribute.
Form fields without labels. A placeholder is not a label. It disappears when typing begins, it often fails contrast, and it is not reliably announced. Every field needs a real label, programmatically associated with it.
Keyboard traps and invisible focus. Every interactive element must be reachable and operable by keyboard alone, and you must be able to see where you are. Removing the focus outline because it looked untidy is a frequent and serious regression.
Headings used for size. Screen reader users navigate by heading structure. Choosing a heading level because of how large it renders destroys that. One h1, then a logical hierarchy with no skipped levels.
Link text that says nothing. A screen reader can list every link on a page. A list of twelve entries all saying “read more” is useless. Link text should make sense read alone.
Video without captions. Required at AA, and beneficial well beyond the people it is required for.
Testing without specialist tools
Automated checkers catch perhaps a third of issues and are worth running first because they find the mechanical failures quickly. The rest needs a person.
Three checks anyone can do in twenty minutes:
- Unplug the mouse. Complete your main task using only the keyboard. Note anywhere you get stuck or cannot see where you are.
- Zoom to 200 per cent. Content must remain usable without horizontal scrolling. This catches a great deal.
- Turn on the screen reader already built into your operating system and listen to one page. It is uncomfortable at first and extremely informative.
Documentation is part of the obligation
Public sector duties usually include publishing an accessibility statement: what standard you meet, what does not yet conform, why, and when it will be addressed.
An honest statement listing known gaps with dates is a better position than a vague claim of full compliance that a single test disproves.
Where to start with public sector accessibility
Fix contrast and focus visibility first: both are quick, both affect every page, and both are frequently cited. Then labels and headings. Then content practices for whoever publishes day to day, because accessibility decays with every new page if authors are not equipped.
We build to these criteria as standard rather than as an add-on, across website work and the public sector projects where the obligation is explicit.
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