Universal Design and the Web

Accessbility is a core principle of the Web. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) published by the Web Accessibility Initiative define four key principles which state that anyone who wants to use the Web must have content that is:

Perceivable

Information and user interface components must be presentable to users in ways they can perceive. In other words, it can’t be invisible to all of their senses.

Operable

User interface components and navigation must be possible to operate for a user. So, if key interactions require a mouse then it could be considered inoperable.

Understandable

This means that users must be able to understand the information as well as the operation of the user interface.

Robust

Content must be robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Every year since 2019, WebAIM has conducted an accessibility evaluation of the home pages for the top one million web sites.

In the 2024 study, it found that 95.9% of these homepages had accessbility failures measured against the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.

We think this is an indictment on a web development industry that often only makes web site accessible when required by their client, or overlooks the need to make websites accessible by only developing for the perceived needs of an exclusive demographic.

The four principles defined in the WCAG are for ‘anyone who wants to use the web’, in other words they are universal.

If these guiding principles are applied universally by every organisation producing websites then the Web becomes the equitable plaform is was always intended to be.

At Public Information Lab, these are the principles we follow in our work. We guarantee WCAG Level AA accessibilty compliance (a legal requirement for public sector websites), and aim for Level AAA compliance.

We also guarantee 100% scores across all metrics in Google’s website quality auditing tool Lighthouse. These metrics are Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and Search Engine, and the site you are using now scores 100% on each of these.