An Accessibility Statement for a Small Site

What the document is actually for

Two things, and neither is legal decoration.

It tells somebody who is struggling with your site that you have thought about this and gives them a route to a person, which is the immediately useful part.

And it records your position honestly: what you have done, what you know is not right yet, and what you intend to do about it.

A page that does both is genuinely valuable. A page copied from a template and asserting full conformance does neither, and creates a claim you cannot support.

This is a general description rather than legal advice. Requirements differ by jurisdiction and by the size and type of organisation, and where an obligation applies to you that is a question for somebody qualified.

Do not claim what you have not tested

The most common fault in these pages and the most consequential.

Statements copied from a generator routinely assert conformance with a specific standard at a specific level.

That is a factual claim about your site. If nobody has tested it, the claim is unfounded, and a site with unlabelled images and a form nobody can complete with a keyboard is making a statement that is demonstrably untrue.

An untrue accessibility claim is worse than no statement at all, because it converts an unaddressed problem into a misrepresentation.

The honest version is a statement of intent and current position, which nobody can contradict because it does not overclaim.

What a useful statement contains

• What you are aiming for, named as a standard and level.
• Where you currently stand, honestly.
• Known problems, listed specifically.
• What you are doing about them, with rough timing.
• How to contact you, with a real route and a response time.
• The date the statement was last reviewed.

The third is the item people resist and the one that makes the page credible. Naming your own faults is the clearest evidence that somebody actually looked.

Name the standard, not a law

The common reference point is the international guidance on web content accessibility, which most requirements around the world point at rather than reinventing.

Saying you are working toward a particular version at a particular level is meaningful, testable, and understood.

Referring instead to a specific piece of legislation is riskier for a small business, because the obligations differ by jurisdiction, by organisation size, and by sector, and a statement citing the wrong one is worse than one citing none.

Describe what you are doing to your site. Leave the question of which rules apply to you to somebody who can answer it properly.

The contact route is the important half

The part that helps a real person on the day they need it.

Give an email address or a phone number that reaches somebody, say roughly how quickly you respond, and offer to provide information another way.

That last offer matters more than it sounds. Somebody who cannot complete your booking form can be booked over the phone, and somebody who cannot read a PDF specification can be sent the same content as plain text.

A site that is imperfect but has a working route to a human is far better than one that is imperfect and offers nothing.

Make sure whoever receives those messages knows what to do with them, since an unmonitored accessibility address is worse than none.

A worked example

A regional supplier had a statement generated from a template, claiming full conformance at a level nobody had tested against.

A customer contacted them because the product filters could not be operated with a keyboard, and pointed at the statement.

The claim made an ordinary problem considerably more awkward than it needed to be.

They replaced it with about two hundred words: the standard they were working toward, four specific known issues including the filters, what they were doing about each, a phone number, and an offer to take orders directly.

They fixed two of the four within a month and the filters within three.

The same customer became a regular, and said the specific list was the reason they believed it would actually be dealt with.

Keep it short and dated

Two hundred to four hundred words is plenty for a small site.

Long statements are almost always generated, and their length is what makes them unreadable to the people most likely to need them.

Put the review date on it, and review it when you say you will, because a statement dated two years ago listing issues that are still present says something unflattering.

Reviewing it annually alongside your other yearly checks is enough for most businesses, and it forces a quick look at whether the listed problems were ever fixed.

Do the obvious fixes first

A statement should describe a site somebody is working on rather than substitute for the work.

Before publishing one, spend an afternoon on the things that are cheap and certain: image descriptions, form labels, colour contrast, heading structure, and whether the site can be used with a keyboard.

Those five account for the large majority of what automated tools report and what real users encounter.

Then write the statement describing where you got to, which is a much better document than one written first and never followed up.

The counter-case

A statement is not always the right first move.

A site with serious untouched problems would be better served by an afternoon of fixes than by a page describing them, since the statement helps nobody complete a booking.

There is also a version of this that becomes performative, where a business publishes a careful statement, reviews it annually, and never fixes anything, using the document as evidence of intent in place of action.

And for very small sites with a phone number prominently displayed, the practical accessibility route already exists, and a statement adds formality rather than usefulness.

The statement earns its place when it is accurate, when the contact route is monitored, and when the listed problems shrink over time.

Writing one

1. Fix the obvious failures first, in an afternoon.
2. Test what remains, including with a keyboard.
3. Name the standard you are working toward.
4. List what is still wrong, specifically.
5. Say what you are doing and roughly when.
6. Give a monitored contact route and a response time.
7. Date it and review it annually.

Step four is what makes the page trustworthy, and it is the step every generated statement leaves out.

The parallel question for policy documents is covered in terms of service for a business that sells nothing online.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.