When a customer says your website does not work for them

Sometimes a customer writes to say they could not use a website. Perhaps they could not book with a keyboard, or a screen reader skipped the menu. The business already has a duty in that moment, and a few steps follow from it.

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The duty on a business

GOV.UK sets out the duty. All UK service providers have a legal obligation to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 or the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (in Northern Ireland).

Section 29 of the Equality Act 2010 says this duty applies to anyone who provides a service. Section 20 deals with information. Where the problem lies there, the reasonable steps include steps for ensuring that in the circumstances concerned the information is provided in an accessible format.

A business cannot pass the cost on. Section 20 also stops the person with the duty from asking the disabled person to pay towards it.

Reply, and offer another way in

The person who wrote still needs whatever they came for. A reply that thanks them and offers another route, such as a phone call, an email or a printed form, lets them get on while the site is looked at.

Find what is failing

For a first look, the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative keeps a page called Easy Checks. In the W3C's words, You can do most of the checks using any web browser. Run them on the pages the customer was using.

The W3C sets out their limits. A page could seem to pass them and still have significant barriers, so a deeper review is needed to judge it fully.

The standard to fix to

The W3C's own standard for accessible web content is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It published WCAG 2.2 as a Recommendation on 5 October 2023, and updated it in December 2024.

Fixing what they found

Start with the failures the customer named, on the pages they named. Once those are repaired, run the same checks on those pages again, and tell the customer what has changed.

If you are a public body

Public sector websites and apps have their own regulations on top of the Equality Act. GOV.UK's guidance for public sector bodies explains them, including the accessibility statement each site must publish and keep up to date.

Useful links