Glossary · Accessibility term
Accessibility statement
An accessibility statement is a public page saying how accessible your site actually is. Three things make it worth reading. It names the standard you are aiming at, usually WCAG at Level AA. It says what is not accessible yet and what somebody can do instead. And it gives a person blocked by a barrier a real route to a human, with an answer they can expect inside a stated time. The wording W3C models for the middle part is partially conformant, meaning some parts of the content do not fully conform. That is the honest position for very nearly every site, and it is a far stronger place to stand than a claim you cannot back.
In practice
It belongs in the footer of every page, next to Privacy, with link text reading Accessibility. Four parts are the floor W3C models. A commitment, your conformance status, a route for feedback, and the date the statement was written. Keep that date fresh, because a statement more than a year old reads as unmaintained. Write the month out in words too, so the date means the same thing to a reader in every country.
Who is actually required to publish one is where two European laws get blurred together. The instrument that mandates a statement to a set model is the public sector web accessibility directive, and it binds public sector bodies. The European Accessibility Act reaches the businesses providing the services on its list instead, and what it asks them for is accessibility information rather than a statement. It goes in your terms and conditions or an equivalent document, describing the service and saying how the requirements are met. Related, differently shaped, and not the same duty.
The UK's public sector regulations require a statement too, again for public bodies, and they demand two things most templates leave out. One is a link to the enforcement procedure. The other is a route for somebody to ask you for material the regulations let you leave out.
Give people more than one way to reach you. W3C's own model statement offers a phone number, an email address and a postal address, and it names a response time of five business days. Email alone excludes anybody who cannot use it, which on this particular page is a poor look.
Why it matters
It is a public claim about your own site, so anybody can check it against the site. Claim full conformance you do not have and every later failure becomes a documented contradiction of something you published, which is a considerably worse position than saying partially conformant and listing the gaps. The same trap catches badges, quietly. A conformance logo in your footer is itself a conformance claim under WCAG. A claim has to carry the date, the guidelines title and version and address, the level, a description of the pages covered and the technologies relied upon. A badge with none of that behind it is an incomplete claim rather than a decoration.
What a complete one carries
Four parts are the floor W3C models. A commitment, your conformance status, a feedback route, and the date. The UK's public sector regulations then mandate four of their own. An explanation of the parts that are not accessible and why. A description of any accessible alternative you offer instead. A contact route that also lets somebody request the material the regulations let you exclude. And a link to the enforcement procedure. That last one is what most statements are missing, and under those regulations the statement is where a complaint starts.
Where this shows up on the site
Related terms
- ConformanceConformance means satisfying all the requirements of a standard, and WCAG has five of them rather than one.
- VPATA VPAT is the blank form vendors fill in to report how their product measures against accessibility standards, one row per requirement, using one of five verdicts.
- European Accessibility ActThe European Accessibility Act is the EU law that has required certain consumer products and services to be accessible since 28 June 2025, and the word to hold onto is certain.
- WCAGWCAG is the international standard for web accessibility, published by the W3C.
- Conforming alternate versionA conforming alternate version is a second version of a page that does meet WCAG, standing in for one that does not, and it is a route through the standard rather than a workaround.
- Partial conformanceA statement of partial conformance is what you publish when a page fails only because of content outside your control, such as user comments, an ad slot, or a third-party widget you cannot repair.
- Accessibility supportedA way of using a technology is accessibility supported when two things are true together.
Knowing the word is the easy part.
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