An accessibility statement is a short, public page that tells visitors what you are doing to make your site accessible, how far along you are, and how to get help if they hit a barrier. It is not legally required — but a good one is one of the cheapest, highest-value things you can publish, and a careless one can actually work against you.
Why publish one at all?
Two reasons. First, it demonstrates good-faith effort — a public commitment to a specific standard, with a record of progress, is exactly the posture regulators and courts look on favorably. Second, and more importantly, it gives a real person who hits a real barrier a path to help: a way to report the problem and request the information in a format they can use. That accommodation channel is often what turns a frustrated user into a resolved issue instead of a complaint.
What to include
- Your commitment and standard. Name the target explicitly — “We are working to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA.”
- Scope. What the statement covers (your main website; note if certain subsites or third-party tools are excluded).
- Current status. Honest and specific: “partially conformant — some content does not yet fully meet the standard,” not a blanket “fully accessible.”
- Known limitations. Name the gaps you are aware of (e.g., “some older PDFs are not yet tagged”) and that you are working on them.
- Feedback and contact. An email and phone number monitored by a real person, with a commitment to respond and to provide accessible alternatives on request.
- Date. When the statement was last reviewed — a stale statement signals a stale program.
Want your statement backed by a real audit instead of aspiration? We assess your site against WCAG 2.1 AA and give you the documented status your accessibility statement should honestly reflect.
What NOT to do
Do not overclaim. “Our website is fully ADA compliant” or “100% WCAG conformant” is, for almost every real site, untrue — and a written, public overstatement is a gift to anyone considering a complaint. Claim the target you are working toward and the honest status you are at.
Do not treat an overlay widget as compliance. The pop-up “accessibility” toolbars that promise instant conformance do not fix the underlying code, are frequently criticized by actual assistive-technology users, and have themselves been named in lawsuits. An overlay is not a substitute for real remediation, and your statement should not lean on one.
Do not bury it. Link the statement from your footer on every page so it is easy to find — the person who needs it most is the person hitting a barrier right now.
Keep it current
An accessibility statement is a living document. Revisit it whenever you complete a remediation milestone, redesign a template, or change your conformance target, and update the review date each time. A statement that honestly tracks a real, ongoing program is an asset; one that was written once and forgotten is just another stale page.