Guidance
Meeting accessibility requirements
What a Commonwealth public service must do to be usable by disabled people, how it is tested, and what to publish when something is not yet fixed.
The requirement
Commonwealth public services must meet WCAG 2.2 to level AA. This is a floor, not a target — meeting it does not guarantee a service is usable, and a service that meets every success criterion can still be impossible to complete with a screen reader.
Every service must also publish an accessibility statement, keep it current, and list the problems it knows about but has not fixed yet.
How to test
Automated testing finds roughly a third of accessibility problems. Run it continuously, in your build pipeline, so regressions are caught the day they are introduced rather than at audit.
The rest needs people. Test each priority journey with a screen reader, at 400% magnification, with speech input, and using the keyboard alone. Then test with disabled people who were not involved in building the service.
- Automated checks in the build pipeline, on every change
- Manual keyboard-only testing of every journey
- Screen reader testing on at least two screen reader and browser pairs
- Testing at 400% zoom and with text spacing overrides applied
- Research sessions with disabled participants at least once per stage
Providing an assisted digital route
Around one in eleven people who need a public service cannot complete it online. A service without another route through has not solved the whole problem, and will not pass assessment.
The route can be a telephone line, an appointment, a paper form, or a trusted third party acting on someone's behalf. What it cannot be is a slower, worse version that leaves people waiting weeks longer than everyone else.
Publishing an accessibility statement
Your statement must say how the service was tested, when, by whom, and what is not accessible yet. Vague statements are worse than none — they tell someone the service might work for them when the team already knows it does not.
Update the statement whenever a known problem is fixed or a new one is found, and review it in full at least once a year.
Related guidance
The Commonwealth Service Standard
The fourteen points every Commonwealth public service is assessed against before it launches, and every three years after that.
Writing for public services
How to write service content people understand first time, including the Commonwealth's rules on terminology, tone, and reading level.
Using the Commonwealth Design System
The components, patterns, and styles Commonwealth services share, and when it is right to build something that is not in the system.
Services this guidance applies to
Request an accessibility audit
Have your service tested against the Commonwealth accessibility requirements by people who use assistive technology every day.
Book a service assessment
Book the independent panel review that every Commonwealth public service must pass before it launches to the public.