Website accessibility for small businesses in Australia
About one in five Australians, 5.5 million people, had disability in 2022, according to the ABS, and many of them use a website with a keyboard, a screen reader or the text made larger. Australian law doesn't set a technical standard for small business websites, but it does say you can't discriminate against people with disability. Here's what that means in practice, and the first fixes worth making.
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The short answer
Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, a business website counts as a service, and making it impossible for people with disability to use can be unlawful discrimination unless fixing it would cause unjustifiable hardship. There is no inspector or certificate. It comes up when someone complains to the Australian Human Rights Commission. The Commission's 2025 guidelines say websites should meet WCAG 2.2 at Level AA as a minimum, though the guidelines themselves are not legally binding.
What the law actually says
The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone because of disability when providing goods or services, and a website counts as a service. The first well-known case was Maguire v SOCOG in 2000, about the Sydney Olympics website. If a business says fixing its site would cause unjustifiable hardship, it has to prove it. In April 2025 the Australian Human Rights Commission replaced its old website advisory notes with new guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services. They recommend WCAG 2.2 Level AA, say they aren't legally binding, and warn against relying on automatic accessibility overlay plug-ins.
First fixes worth making
Text alternatives on images
Images that carry meaning get a short description for screen readers. Decorative images are marked so they're skipped.
Enough contrast
Text is dark enough on its background to read, including light grey text and text over photos.
Works with a keyboard
Menus, buttons and forms can be reached and used with the Tab and Enter keys, and you can see where you are on the page.
Forms people can fill in
Each field has a proper label, errors say what's wrong in words and not only in red, and the form works with a screen reader.
Text that can grow
The page still works when someone zooms to 200%, without text overlapping or being cut off.
Captions and readable documents
Videos have captions, and important information isn't only in a scanned PDF or an image.
Another way to contact you
If someone can't use a form, they can still reach you by phone or email. The Commission recommends offering an accessible contact path.
Who this matters most for
- Businesses whose customers book, buy or apply online.
- Health, aged care, disability and community services, where many customers have disability.
- Businesses tendering for government or council work, where accessibility can come up in the tender questions.
- Anyone planning a new website. It's much cheaper to build it in than to fix it later.
How to check your site
- Run a free scanner. Tools like WAVE, axe or Google Lighthouse find problems a computer can detect, such as missing image descriptions and low contrast.
- Then try it without a mouse. Use only the Tab, Shift-Tab and Enter keys to get through your main pages and send a form.
- Try a screen reader. VoiceOver is built into Macs and iPhones, and NVDA is free for Windows. Listen to your contact or booking page.
- Fix the main path first. Make sure people can find out what you do and contact or book with you. That's where most of the benefit is.
How WaTo can help
- Our website security and compliance audit includes a quick accessibility check of your main pages and forms against WCAG 2.2.
- We can fix what it finds on sites we build, host or maintain, and build new sites with accessibility in from the start.
- For a full WCAG 2.2 AA audit with testing by people with disability, which large organisations and government suppliers sometimes need, we'll tell you who to talk to.
Website accessibility questions
Is website accessibility a legal requirement for small business in Australia?
There's no law that sets a technical standard for private business websites. The Disability Discrimination Act makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with disability in providing a service, and a website counts. It's enforced through complaints, not inspections.
Which standard should my website meet?
The Australian Human Rights Commission's 2025 guidelines say WCAG 2.2 at Level AA as a minimum. The guidelines aren't legally binding, but they're what the Commission points to.
Will an accessibility plug-in or overlay fix my site?
Not reliably. The Commission's 2025 guidelines say automated overlay tools shouldn't be relied on. Fixing the site itself works better.
Can a free scanner tell me if my site is accessible?
Only partly. Automated tools catch the problems a computer can detect. In a GOV.UK test of ten tools, the best found about 41% of the planted barriers. Keyboard and screen reader testing finds the rest.
Does accessibility help with Google?
Often, yes. Clear headings, image descriptions and readable text help search engines understand a page as well as people.
How WaTo can help with this
Guides on this topic
- Website compliance checklist for Australian small businesses
- Website redesign checklist: improve the site without losing what already works
- Is my website safe?
Sources & references
- Australian Human Rights Commission: Guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services (April 2025)
- W3C: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
- GOV.UK: What we found when we tested tools on the world's least-accessible webpage (2017)
- Australian Bureau of Statistics: Disability, Ageing and Carers, Australia: Summary of Findings, 2022
WaTo Consulting. Last reviewed 2026-11-07. Review yearly, and when the Human Rights Commission updates its guidelines.
Want to know how your site does?
Book a fixed-price website check and we'll include a quick accessibility review of your main pages and forms.
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