Start with five things: real alt text on images, a site you can operate with the keyboard alone, sufficient colour contrast, properly labelled form fields, and headings used as structure rather than styling. Those five resolve the majority of problems real people hit. The recognised benchmark is WCAG 2.2 at Level AA. And to be straight about the legal position in New Zealand: if you are a private business, this is very probably not a legal requirement for you — but there are good commercial reasons to do it anyway.
Who Is Actually Required to Comply in New Zealand
This gets misrepresented, sometimes by people selling accessibility services, so it is worth stating precisely.
The New Zealand Government Web Accessibility Standard 1.2 took effect on 17 March 2025 and requires conformance with WCAG 2.2 at Level AA. Under a 2003 Cabinet mandate it applies to Public Service departments, the Defence Force, the Police and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. Other public sector and local government organisations are encouraged to implement it but are not required to.
Private businesses are not covered by that standard. If a vendor tells you your café or plumbing website is breaking the law by not meeting WCAG, ask them which law. One practical exception worth noting: if you tender for government work, accessibility expectations can appear in procurement requirements, so check the specific tender rather than assuming either way.
So Why Bother?
Because the reasons that survive scrutiny are commercial and ethical rather than legal:
- You are excluding customers who want to buy from you. Disability is common, much of it invisible, and a lot of it is situational — anyone using one hand while holding a child, or squinting at a phone in bright sun, benefits from the same fixes.
- New Zealand's population is ageing. Declining eyesight, reduced fine motor control and hearing loss are ordinary parts of getting older, and older customers frequently have the most money to spend.
- It overlaps heavily with SEO. Descriptive alt text, proper heading structure, meaningful link text and semantic markup are recommended for accessibility and for search. You largely do this work once.
- Machines read your site too. Clean semantic structure is what makes a page parseable by search crawlers and AI assistants. Accessible sites tend to be legible to software for the same reasons.
- It usually makes the site better for everyone. Higher contrast, clearer labels and predictable navigation are not concessions; they are just better design.
The Five Highest-Impact Fixes
1. Write real alt text
Every meaningful image needs a text description of what it conveys. Describe the content and purpose, not the file: "Plumber replacing a hot water cylinder in a Wellington villa" rather than "IMG_4471" or "plumbing services Wellington plumber NZ".
Purely decorative images should have an empty alt attribute so screen readers skip them rather than announcing noise. And if an image contains words — a price list, an infographic, a poster — that text must also exist as real text on the page, because nobody can read a picture of a price list aloud.
2. Make everything work with a keyboard
Many people navigate without a mouse. Put your mouse aside and press Tab repeatedly through your own site. You are looking for:
- A visible indicator showing where you are — if the focus ring is invisible, keyboard users are lost
- A sensible order that follows the visual layout
- Every link, button, menu and form field reachable
- Menus and modals that open, operate and close with the keyboard, including Escape
- No trap you cannot Tab out of
Custom-built dropdowns, sliders and popups are where this most often fails.
3. Check your colour contrast
Light grey text on white is the single most common failure in modern small business design, and it is fashionable, which is why it persists. WCAG's Level AA thresholds are a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Free contrast checkers will tell you in seconds.
Also: never rely on colour alone to carry meaning. A required field marked only by turning red is invisible to a colour-blind visitor. Add a label or an icon as well.
4. Label your form fields properly
Every input needs a real associated label, not just placeholder text. Placeholder text vanishes the moment someone starts typing, which is precisely when a person with a memory or attention difficulty most needs it.
Error messages should say what went wrong and how to fix it — "Please enter a phone number including area code" beats "Invalid input". And keep the error next to the field it concerns, not only at the top of the page.
5. Use headings as structure
One H1 stating what the page is, then H2s for sections and H3s beneath them, in order. Do not skip levels because of how the text looks, and do not use a heading tag to make something big — that is what styling is for.
Screen reader users navigate by jumping between headings. A page with no headings, or with headings applied cosmetically, is a page they have to read start to finish to understand.
How to Test It Yourself
You can get a long way in under an hour:
- The keyboard test. Tab through the whole site. Free, fast, and finds more real problems than most automated scans.
- The zoom test. Zoom to 200% and check nothing overlaps, gets cut off or becomes unusable.
- A contrast checker. Test your body text, your buttons and your links against their backgrounds.
- An automated scan. Browser extensions and Lighthouse's accessibility audit catch missing alt text, unlabelled fields and contrast failures quickly.
- A screen reader. VoiceOver is built into macOS and iOS, Narrator into Windows. Clumsy at first, and genuinely eye-opening.
Be clear about the limits of automated tools: they catch a meaningful slice of issues but cannot tell you whether your alt text is accurate, whether your heading structure makes sense, or whether your custom menu is operable. A clean automated report is not a pass.
Common Mistakes
- Installing an accessibility overlay widget. The little floating icon offering high-contrast mode and text resizing. These are widely criticised by disabled users and accessibility practitioners, they do not fix the underlying markup, and they can interfere with the assistive technology people already use. Fix the site instead.
- Treating an automated score as compliance. Passing a scan is a floor, not a ceiling.
- Keyword-stuffing alt text. Bad for the reader who depends on it, and it is not helping your SEO either.
- Auto-playing video with sound, or carousels that move on their own with no way to pause them.
- Assuming it is a one-off project. Every new page and image is a new opportunity to break it. Make alt text part of publishing.
- Leaving it to the end of a rebuild. Retrofitting is far more expensive than building it in.
Do This Today
- Tab through your homepage and your contact page without using your mouse
- Check whether the keyboard focus indicator is visible — if not, that is your first fix
- Run a contrast checker on your body text and your main button
- Run Lighthouse's accessibility audit on two key pages
- Add real alt text to every image on your homepage
- Confirm your contact form fields have proper labels, not just placeholders
- If you have an accessibility overlay widget, plan to remove it and fix the causes
Where We Come In
Most of the five fixes above are content-level and genuinely yours to make — alt text especially, since you know what the photos show. Where it stops being DIY is when the problems are structural: a theme with an invisible focus state, custom menus that cannot be operated by keyboard, or a colour palette that fails contrast throughout. Those need changes at the build level, which is part of what a redesign addresses. We would rather you did the free hour of testing first and found out how much is actually within reach.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is web accessibility a legal requirement in New Zealand?
For most private businesses, no. The Government Web Accessibility Standard 1.2, which requires WCAG 2.2 Level AA, applies under a 2003 Cabinet mandate to Public Service departments, the Defence Force, the Police and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. Other public sector and local government bodies are encouraged but not required, and private businesses are not covered. If you tender for government work, check the specific procurement requirements.
What is WCAG, and which level should I aim for?
WCAG is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the internationally recognised benchmark. Level AA is the standard almost everyone targets, and it is what the New Zealand government standard requires in its WCAG 2.2 form. Level AAA is stricter and rarely required in full.
Do accessibility overlay widgets work?
They are widely criticised by disabled users and accessibility practitioners. They sit on top of your site without fixing the underlying markup, and they can conflict with the assistive technology someone is already using. Money spent on an overlay subscription is better spent fixing the actual causes.
Does accessibility help SEO?
Substantially, because the two overlap. Descriptive alt text, proper heading hierarchy, meaningful link text and semantic markup are recommended for accessibility and for search, and the same clean structure is what makes pages parseable by AI assistants. Much of the work counts twice.
How do I know if my website is accessible?
Start with the keyboard test — Tab through your site without a mouse — then check colour contrast and run an automated audit such as Lighthouse. Automated tools catch missing alt text, unlabelled fields and contrast failures, but they cannot judge whether your alt text is accurate or your headings sensible, so a clean report is not a pass.
That completes this series. It starts with How to List Your Business on Google if you want to work through it in order.