What is an accessibility statement and do I need one?

A published page stating which standard you target, how far the site currently conforms, what is known not to conform, and how to report a barrier. It is mandatory for UK and EU public sector bodies and good practice for everyone else.

Does a Lighthouse accessibility score of 100 mean my site is accessible?

No. Automated tools detect roughly a third of WCAG failures, because most real barriers are semantic rather than syntactic. A perfect score means nothing mechanically detectable is broken — which is worth having and is not the same as a site people can use.

Does accessibility help SEO?

Yes, because a screen reader and a crawler read the same signals: heading hierarchy, link text, alt attributes, semantic elements, and whether content exists in the HTML at all. Accessibility is not a ranking factor by name, but most of its requirements are things search engines independently reward.

Accessibility

What is the minimum colour contrast for website text?

WCAG 2.2 AA requires 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text — 18.66px bold or 24px regular and above — plus 3:1 for interface components and meaningful graphics. Most body copy and most button labels are normal text, so 4.5:1 is the number that usually applies.

Answered by Anas Bin Masud 198 words 3 sections

The thresholds, precisely

Normal text: 4.5:1 — anything below 18.66px bold or 24px regular.
Large text: 3:1 — 18.66px bold and above, or 24px regular and above.
UI components and graphics: 3:1 — borders, icons, focus indicators, chart lines.
AAA (optional): 7:1 for normal text, 4.5:1 for large. Rarely required, sometimes worth it.

Why brand colours fail so often

Brand palettes are designed for logos and print, where contrast against small text was never a constraint. A mid-tone green that looks excellent on a business card frequently measures around 2:1 against white, which fails by a wide margin.

Measure, do not judge

On this site the WhatsApp button was set to the brand green and a code comment claimed it passed. Lighthouse measured 4.13:1 against a 4.5:1 requirement. It is now #0F7A6B at 5.23:1, with the measured ratio written beside the value so the next person does not repeat it.

The longer version

This answer is deliberately short. If you want the full treatment, Website accessibility, without the compliance theatre covers it in about 5 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.

Who answered this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan — fifteen live client sites, six of them stores taking real payments. These answers come from those projects rather than from a content brief. More about how I work, or ask me something directly.