Download this one-page checklist to quickly assess your website’s accessibility compliance. Based on WCAG 2.1 AA standards, it covers the most common accessibility issues - from missing alt text and poor colour contrast to incomplete form labels that could expose your business to legal risk. Use it as a simple audit tool to identify and fix accessibility gaps before they become costly problems.
What's in this checklist
A practical WCAG 2.1 compliance checklist for website owners - covering the 30 most common accessibility requirements across perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust content. Designed for non-specialists to self-audit, identify priority issues, and brief a developer on what to fix.
WCAG levels explained
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) has three conformance levels: A (minimum), AA (the standard referenced by most accessibility laws), and AAA (enhanced). For most businesses, Level AA is the target - it's what the Australian DDA guidelines reference and what US ADA lawsuits typically hold websites to. Level AAA is recommended for government and accessibility-focused organisations.
In practice, achieving Level AA means: all images have alt text, all videos have captions, all forms have labels, colour contrast ratios meet the minimums, and the site is keyboard-navigable. These are not technically complex to implement - they require attention, not specialised development.
The fastest way to find your biggest issues
Run your site through an automated accessibility checker first - axe DevTools (free browser extension) or WAVE (wave.webaim.org). These tools catch approximately 30% of accessibility issues automatically and flag the highest-priority problems. Automated tools can't catch everything (they can't assess whether alt text is descriptive, only whether it exists), but they give you a starting point before manual review.
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