Australia
AustraliaWebsite accessibility in Australia: the DDA, the AHRC and WCAG
Australia has no law that names a web standard for businesses. But the Disability Discrimination Act applies to websites and online shops, and since April 2025 the Australian Human Rights Commission recommends WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the minimum. Here is what that means, and how we get your site there.
From EUR 2,000 per project
The Disability Discrimination Act and websites
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) is the federal law that protects people with disability against discrimination. Among other areas, it covers the provision of goods, services and facilities (section 24). A business website, an online shop, a booking system or a mobile app is one of the ways a business provides its services, so the DDA applies to it.
The Act does not require a particular technical standard. It prohibits direct discrimination, treating someone less favourably because of their disability, and indirect discrimination, imposing a condition that a person with disability cannot meet, such as a checkout that only works with a mouse. It also provides a limit: a business is not required to make adjustments that would impose an unjustifiable hardship (section 11), which is assessed case by case, taking into account costs, benefits and the resources of the business.
State and territory anti-discrimination laws apply alongside the DDA.
What the AHRC's 2025 guidelines say
The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) can issue guidelines to help organisations avoid discrimination (section 67(1)(k) of the DDA). In April 2025, it published its Guidelines on equal access to digital goods and services, which replace its 2014 advisory note on web access.
They are not legally binding, and must be read with the whole DDA and state and territory laws. But they set out what the Commission, which handles discrimination complaints, considers good practice.
They recommend that organisations conform with WCAG 2.2 at Level AA as a minimum, and consider some Level AAA criteria such as transcripts, clear links and section headings.
They cover more than websites: documents, mobile apps, social media, self-service machines and artificial intelligence.
WCAG 2.2 was published by the W3C on 5 October 2023. It adds nine success criteria to WCAG 2.1 and removes one that had become obsolete (4.1.1 Parsing); the new criteria concern on visible focus, target size, dragging movements, consistent help and accessible authentication.
What happens when a site is not accessible
A person who meets a barrier can lodge a complaint with the AHRC, which tries to resolve it through conciliation. If that fails, the person can take the matter to the federal courts.
The best-known Australian case is also one of the first in the world on web accessibility. In 2000, a blind man, Bruce Maguire, complained that the website of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games could not be used with his screen reader. The Commission found unlawful discrimination under the DDA, rejected the argument of unjustifiable hardship because the fixes were moderate in cost and could have been built in from the start, and awarded him $20,000 in damages.
The lesson still holds: accessibility costs little when it is designed in, and a lot when it is added after a complaint.
What we check and fix
On a business website or an online shop, the most common barriers are:
images without a text alternative, and icons or buttons without an accessible name;
text contrast that is too low, and information conveyed by colour alone;
menus, sliders and pop-ups that cannot be used with a keyboard, or that trap the focus;
forms without proper labels, error messages that are not announced, and CAPTCHAs without an alternative;
a checkout or booking journey that breaks when zoomed or used on a small screen;
videos without captions.
Our accessibility compliance service starts with an audit of a representative sample of pages and key journeys (home page, contact form, product page, cart, checkout, account). We combine automated tests (axe DevTools, WAVE, Lighthouse) with manual checks of the criteria that tools cannot detect. You receive a report with a compliance grid by criterion, screenshots, a prioritised action plan and a draft accessibility statement.
If you want us to fix the issues, we quote the remediation separately and apply the technical fixes to the templates, so that they apply across the site. PDF documents and testing with people with disability are not included unless the quote provides for them. The starting price is shown at the top of this page and on our pricing page.
For a new site, we build to WCAG 2.2 Level AA from the start: see website creation and online shop creation.
What we do not promise
We do not certify compliance with the DDA and we do not give legal advice. No standard makes a site immune to a complaint, and third-party modules (payment pages, booking tools, chat widgets) depend partly on their publishers. What we deliver is an audit against WCAG 2.2, technical fixes and a record of what has been tested and corrected: the evidence that you have taken reasonable steps.
Frequently asked questions
Is WCAG compliance a legal requirement for my business?
Not as such: the DDA prohibits discrimination without naming a standard. But WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the level the Australian Human Rights Commission recommends, and it is the practical way to show that your site does not exclude people with disability.
Does the DDA apply to small businesses?
The DDA has no size threshold for the provision of goods and services. The resources of the business are one of the factors taken into account when assessing unjustifiable hardship, which is why fixing the main barriers early is the sensible approach.
Is an accessibility overlay widget enough?
No. A widget added on top of the page does not fix the underlying code, the structure or the forms. We fix the templates themselves.