Charity Website Accessibility: Inclusive Design and Meeting Your Legal Obligations

Digital accessibility is a legal requirement. So why do so many websites still fail to meet basic web standards?

Just as it does every year, the WebAim Million Annual Report revealed that of the 1 million homepages assessed in the sample - a whopping 96% had errors that don’t meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2

It’s a stark reminder that there is still so much work to be done. The internet remains fundamentally ableist — the vast majority of sites are not built with accessible considerations in mind. There’s much conversation around how AI is changing how we use the web, but where are the conversations about designing the web for the cohorts who still can’t use the web efficiently, or indeed, at all?

Charities can give themselves a (small) pat on the back; as a sector, their error count was 23% lower than the average homepage (second only to government websites). Proof that an inclusive attitude really does make a world of difference. But, it still means that many people are encountering difficulties in the user experience, 1 in every 26 interactions.

If you've read our guide to website accessibility, you'll already know the basics: what accessibility means, why it matters, and how to check how your current site stands up. In this article, we’re answering two questions we hear most from charities when they’re weighing up the case for a redesign or replatform: what does inclusive design mean for us, beyond a WCAG checklist? And, just as importantly, what are we legally required to do?

These questions can be answered simultaneously, because as we’ve pointed out, accessibility isn’t just about making your web experience smoother for a handful of users, it impacts the success of your website as a whole. Poor accessibility means poor search performance, and runs the risk of reputational and legal challenges. It can no longer be considered a nice-to-have: a charity website without inclusive design considerations built in isn't doing its job as a branding asset, a fundraising tool, or a knowledge base. 

So let's talk about what inclusive design means, and where the legal line sits. Our intention is to give charities the information they need to prepare a web design project with accessibility requirements baked into the brief from the start. Our goal? To help you avoid wasting valuable time and budget on the costly retro-fitting and deployment of compliant design later on. So let’s do it!

Inclusive Design vs Accessibility: What's the Difference?

When it comes to websites, 'accessibility’ and ‘inclusive design’ are often used interchangeably. But, they're not quite the same thing, even though, yes, they do have the same goal; to make a website accessible to everyone.

Accessibility is largely about removing barriers from something that already exists. It's the practice of making sure a website meets recognised standards — the POUR principles (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) that underpin WCAG — so that assistive technologies and diverse users can actually use it. It's often applied retrospectively: you build the site, then you test it, then you fix what's broken.

Inclusive design considers diverse audiences’ needs from the beginning. It asks the questions: who are we actually designing for, and how can we design with their range of needs, contexts, and circumstances in mind from the outset?

When we talk about accessibility, we’re talking about the essential standards you need to meet. Inclusive design is the creative practice of designing and developing digital projects to serve everyone in your target market.

Today, any design considerations need to come from an inclusive design standpoint. The charity sector needs to prove that every single penny of investment is going to have a positive impact. The best place to start, from our point of view? Your website. Make sure your website welcomes, and serves every single user; from when they arrive on your homepage, to when they leave.

Inclusive Design Meets People Where They Are

It’s more than just an open-door policy, inclusive design is giving your charity website the framework and tools to meet audience’s needs once they’ve metaphorically stepped over the threshold, and entered your site.

It’s a statistic that we’ve returned to in many of our articles on the topic of accessibility, but given the woeful progress on compliance, we reckon it’s fair to keep hammering this point home; serving the 16 million disabled users in the UK is a moral, legal and financial imperative for any website.

As with any poor user experience, the friction experienced on a charity website creates a negative perception on multiple levels; not only can users not navigate the site, but with each difficulty they experience, their trust in the brand is eroded, and the potential impact is reduced — both from a support/cause and fundraising perspective.

The purple pound - that is the spending power of households with at least one disabled family member - is worth around £274 billion to the UK economy. Data published in a 2024 House of Commons Committee report reveals 81% of companies are unaware of the value of the purple pound, and 59% hadn’t researched the accessibility needs of their target consumers. For charities, an online donation user journey that hasn’t been designed to be inclusive risks excluding this source of valuable funds altogether.

As a charity, you know your website’s audience is a diverse set of personas. On any given day, your website might need to work for: an elderly donor on a tablet with limited dexterity; a beneficiary reaching out during a moment of genuine crisis (possibly with patchy signal), a corporate partner skimming your impact report on a laptop between meetings; or a volunteer trying to find an event sign-up page while short on time.

They're your real audience, in a real-world context, and many of them are dealing with some kind of situational, temporary, or permanent barrier to using your site efficiently. That's why inclusive design has to start with audience research. Think about building (or revisiting) your personas with these realities built in, and ask what each one needs. What does someone in genuine distress need from your ‘Help’ page — is it three sentences and a phone number, or a wall of text? Can your donation form be completed one-handed, on a small screen, by someone who's never filled in an online form before?

A charity website needs to do three jobs at once: build and protect your brand, generate donations and support, and act as a source of trustworthy knowledge for people who need it. Each purpose requires the site to meet people where they actually are — not where you'd like them to be, or where your internal team happens to be, digitally speaking. Design that fails to do this doesn't just exclude disabled users (though it does that, and that alone should be reason enough). It doesn’t serve anyone who isn't already in the most comfortable, confident, well-resourced segment of your audience. Given that charities depend on reach and trust to promote their cause, it is in every charities’ interest to meet as many peoples possible.

The Legal Bit: What UK Charities Have Comply with

The reality is that in many organisations, charities included, there isn’t someone taking sole ownership or accountability for accessibility and inclusivity, which means clarity on what a charity’s legal obligations isn’t readily available. Here’s a clear breakdown:

The Equality Act 2010 is the piece of legislation that applies to charities. Under the Act, charities are considered "service providers," and service providers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled people aren't put at a substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled people when accessing goods, facilities, or services. The Act doesn't name WCAG specifically, and it doesn’t set out a technical checklist for inclusive digital design, but it creates a general legal duty. In short, an inaccessible website that a disabled user can't reasonably use to access your services could be assessed to be in breach of the Equality Act 2010. The pragmatic action for most charities is to build to a recognised standard as opposed to finding out where the line is in court later.

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 is the other piece of law people mention, but this is where uncertainty creeps in. These regulations set a hard, specific requirement: align with WCAG and publish an accessibility statement. But, they apply to public sector bodies. Most charities are not public sector bodies and so aren't directly bound by these regulations. However, if your charity delivers services on behalf of a public body, is largely publicly funded, or is otherwise exercising a public function, you may fall inside scope, so it's worth checking rather than assuming either way.

Here are some other frequently asked questions we get when discussing accessibility requirements:

Is WCAG 2.2 a legal requirement in the UK for charities? 

Not directly, for most charities — but it's the standard that reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act are judged against in practice, and it's what funders, partners and regulators increasingly expect to see referenced. Treat it as the baseline requirement.

Can a charity be sued in the UK for an inaccessible website? 

Yes — a disabled user who's been put at a substantial disadvantage could bring a claim under the Equality Act. However, most disputes get resolved before they reach that point, through direct complaints, regulatory pressure, or funder requirements. For any charity, the reputational damage simply isn’t worth the risk.

What are the 4 principles of web accessibility? 

Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust — the POUR principles sit underneath WCAG, and are covered in more depth in our general accessibility guide.

The Public Sector Regulations set a specific legal standard that applies to a small group. The Equality Act sets a broader, less prescriptive duty that applies to virtually every charity. WCAG, although by name a set of guidelines, is consistently referred to as the gold standard for accessibility. Meeting these guidelines demonstrates you've taken your Equality Act duty seriously, whether or not the 2018 Regulations technically apply to you.

Accessibility Statement - Do I Need One?

The simple answer is yes, an accessibility statement is best practice for all. If the 2018 Regulations apply to you, publishing an accessibility statement is a legal requirement, not optional. It needs to set out your current compliance level, any known issues, and how people can request information in an alternative format if they are.

Even if you don’t have it as a legal obligation, an accessibility statement is fast becoming standard practice across the charity sector because funders, corporate partners, and increasingly the public expect to see one. It signals that your organisation takes responsibility and a duty of care towards inclusivity and accessibility, and helps your internal team manage and improve upon your compliance to current standards.

Don’t over complicate it or over jargon it. State plainly what you've done to make your website’s services accessible, what you're still working on, and how someone can contact you, should they need assistance. The charities that treat this as a trust-building exercise, rather than a compliance formality, tend to get it right.

Think, Inclusive!

When we’re working with charities, we are often starting from scratch to design a new brand direction and website to promote their cause. Legal compliance becomes a given when inclusive principles take charge of the design and development of the website from the start. 

An accessible, inclusively designed website is how your charity lives up to what it promises to do; reaching the people who need you, earning the trust of the people who fund you, and including everyone along the way. So if your priority is to elevate the charity brand to increase impact, and increase funds — an inclusive attitude is a good place to start.