What an accessible website really means — and who is legally required to have one

Web accessibility has an image problem: it sounds like an obscure technical requirement, somewhere between "legal checkbox" and "thing we'll do after launch". In reality, the question it asks is as simple as it gets: who can use your website — and who gets left outside?

According to the European Commission, around 87 million people in the European Union have some form of disability. Add everyone no statistic counts: people past a certain age, people who left their glasses at home, people with one hand occupied or in a cast, people browsing on an old phone, in sunlight, on a weak connection. Accessibility isn't a niche. It's how a website works for real people, in real conditions.

Start with what matters to you: are you legally obligated?

Before any theory, the answer that matters for you. Three questions, an instant verdict, nothing leaves your browser:

You have your verdict. If you also want to understand what's behind it — what the standard requires, why the PageSpeed score is no guarantee, and why "miracle solutions" aren't a solution — take it from here, one step at a time.

The score myth: why a high accessibility score can mean nothing

Let's start with the confession this article grew out of: during internal research, we ran Google's automated accessibility test on a domain that turned out to be… empty. A page with no content — just the bare file listing the server displays. The accessibility score: 93 out of 100. The automated test had no way of knowing it was testing nothing.

That doesn't make automated tests useless — it means they must be understood. An automated test checks what a machine can check: color contrast, images without alternative text, buttons without names, heading structure. Those are real, useful checks. But an important part of accessibility criteria can only be verified by people: does the order a screen reader walks through the page make sense? Can the whole site be used from the keyboard alone, without getting stuck? Do the forms make sense to someone who can't see the visual context?

The practical conclusion: a low automated score means certain problems. A high score does not, by itself, guarantee the site is accessible. It's the entry requirement, not the diploma.

What the standard actually asks for

The international web-accessibility standard is called WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), and the European standard that incorporates it — EN 301 549 — is the one the laws point to. Beyond the codes and acronyms, the whole standard rests on four principles anyone can understand without technical training:

• Perceivable — content can be perceived by anyone: images have alternative text (for screen readers), videos have captions, text has enough contrast against its background to be read by someone with weakened vision — and by anyone, outdoors, in the sun.
• Operable — the site can be used however you navigate: everything works from the keyboard, not just the mouse; nothing flashes aggressively; nobody chases you with countdowns; and menus don't snap shut right as you reach for them.
• Understandable — the language is clear, forms tell you plainly what they need from you, and when you make a mistake, the error message explains what went wrong and how to fix it — not just a mute red border.
• Robust — the page is built correctly "underneath", so it works with the assistive technologies of today and tomorrow: screen readers, voice control, specialized navigation devices (switches, adapted keyboards).

Nothing on that list is exotic. It is, mostly, the definition of a well-built website — which is why accessibility and quality travel together, not on separate roads.

Who is legally obligated — in two minutes

In short, two laws matter in Romania:

1. For public institutions: OUG 112/2018 (transposing EU Directive 2016/2102) — their websites must be accessible per the European standard EN 301 549, with a published accessibility statement. The obligation has existed for years; oversight sits with the Authority for Digitalization of Romania.
2. For companies: Law 232/2022 (transposing the European Accessibility Act, EU Directive 2019/882) — since June 28, 2025, services in the covered sectors must meet accessibility requirements: online commerce (e-commerce), consumer banking services, telecommunications, access to audiovisual media, passenger transport (if you sell tickets or provide information online), e-books. Microenterprises providing services are exempt — but the exemption holds only while the company fits the thresholds. And beyond services, the law also covers certain products, from e-readers to payment terminals — for products, there is no microenterprise exemption at all.

Not sure where you fall? The test at the top of the article gives you the verdict in 30 seconds — scroll back up and answer the three questions.

The "miracle solution" trap: overlays

Along with the legal obligations, a market of shortcuts has bloomed: "accessibility" widgets — floating buttons promising to make any website compliant, instantly, with one line of code. They're called overlays. We're not talking here about preference buttons built into a site (text size, contrast) — but about third-party scripts promising overnight compliance. Their promise is too good to be true: a script layered on top of a page cannot repair the structure underneath — which is exactly what the standard requires.

That's not just our opinion: the Overlay Fact Sheet, a document signed by more than a thousand accessibility specialists and assistive-technology users worldwide, lays out these tools' limits and explicitly recommends against treating them as a compliance solution. Many screen-reader users end up disabling them, because they get in the way more than they help.

If a vendor promises you legal compliance "from a button", you've learned everything you needed to know about that vendor.

What you can do concretely, today

Without buying anything and without knowing how to code:

1. The keyboard test, 5 minutes. Put the mouse down. Move through your site with Tab, Enter, and the arrow keys only. See where you can go, where you get stuck, what you can't open. It's the fastest way to feel part of the problem first-hand.
2. The automated test, as a starting point. pagespeed.web.dev, the "Accessibility" tab. A low score = certain problems, with their list. A high score = just the beginning, as explained above.
3. Three naked-eye checks: do all important images have alternative text? Does the text read effortlessly against its background? Do the forms clearly say what they want and what you got wrong?
4. If you operate in one of the obligated sectors — or represent a public institution — plan a real audit, done by people, against the full standard. The automated test is no substitute for an audit.

For us, accessibility is a launch condition, not a box ticked afterwards — including on projects for public institutions, where it's also a legal obligation. And for anyone who wants to check without installing anything: we're building a free checking tool, right here on our site.

The honest conclusion

An accessible website isn't a website "only for people with disabilities". It's a website that works for more people, in more situations — including the customers you've had for ten years, who no longer see the way they did at twenty. The law has turned common sense into an obligation for more and more businesses; but the real reason remains a simple one: a counter open to everyone beats a counter that picks who gets in.

If you want to know where your website stands — from the 5-minute test to a full audit — write to us. We'll tell you exactly what we find, what's urgent, and what can wait.