Web Accessibility in India: Designing Inclusive Websites for All Users

The Accessibility Imperative for Indian Businesses

India has 26.8 million people with disabilities according to the 2011 Census, a figure widely considered an undercount. The World Bank estimates the actual number at closer to 80 million when including conditions like low vision, colour blindness, motor impairments, and cognitive disabilities. Add situational impairments, a person using their phone in bright sunlight, a new parent holding a baby while browsing, someone with a temporary injury, and the number of users who benefit from accessible design expands to virtually everyone at some point.

Yet a 2025 audit of 500 Indian commercial websites found that 92% failed basic accessibility standards. Buttons without labels, images without alt text, forms that cannot be navigated by keyboard, videos without captions, and colour contrasts that make text invisible to people with low vision.

This is not just an ethical failure. It is a legal risk and a business opportunity missed.

The Legal Framework in India

Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016

The RPwD Act mandates that all government and government-funded websites must be accessible. While the Act's direct requirements on private sector websites are still evolving, the trend is clear: accessibility standards will extend to commercial websites, particularly those offering essential services like banking, healthcare, education, and e-commerce.

Information Technology Act, 2000

The IT Act's guidelines on reasonable accommodation in digital services apply to websites that serve as primary interfaces for service delivery. Businesses that deny access to disabled users through inaccessible websites face potential legal challenges under anti-discrimination provisions.

GIGW 3.0 (Guidelines for Indian Government Websites)

The latest version of India's government web guidelines mandates WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance. While directly applicable to government sites, these guidelines increasingly serve as the benchmark for private sector accessibility expectations.

Global Context

Indian businesses serving international markets must also consider the ADA (US), EAA (European Accessibility Act, effective June 2025), and similar regulations. Non-compliance can result in lawsuits, with over 4,000 web accessibility lawsuits filed in the US alone in 2024.

Understanding WCAG: The Global Accessibility Standard

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, published by the W3C, is the international standard for web accessibility. It is built on four principles, remembered by the acronym POUR:

WCAG has three conformance levels: A (minimum), AA (standard target), and AAA (highest). For Indian businesses, Level AA is the recommended target, balancing comprehensive accessibility with practical implementation.

The Most Common Accessibility Failures on Indian Websites

1. Missing Alternative Text for Images

Screen reader users encounter images as blank spaces when alt text is missing. Every meaningful image needs descriptive alt text. Decorative images should have empty alt attributes (alt="") so screen readers skip them.

On Indian e-commerce sites, this is particularly critical for product images. A visually impaired shopper needs alt text like "Red cotton kurta with golden embroidery, front view" not just "product image" or nothing at all.

2. Insufficient Colour Contrast

WCAG AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Many Indian websites, particularly those using light grey text on white backgrounds or coloured text on coloured backgrounds, fail this requirement.

This affects not only visually impaired users but also anyone viewing the website on a budget phone with a low-quality display or in bright outdoor conditions, which describes a large portion of Indian mobile users.

3. Keyboard Inaccessibility

Users with motor impairments often navigate websites using only a keyboard (Tab, Enter, Arrow keys, Escape). If your website's navigation, forms, and interactive elements cannot be operated without a mouse, these users are completely locked out.

Common keyboard accessibility failures:

• Custom dropdown menus that only respond to mouse clicks
• Modal dialogs with no keyboard focus management
• Hamburger menus that cannot be opened via keyboard
• Carousels with no keyboard controls
• Focus indicators removed for aesthetic reasons (the outline that shows which element is currently selected)

4. Forms Without Proper Labels

Screen readers rely on HTML label elements to identify form fields. A form that visually displays "Name" and "Email" above text fields but uses placeholder text instead of proper <label> elements is unusable for screen reader users.

5. Videos Without Captions

With video content becoming central to Indian business websites, the absence of captions excludes deaf and hard-of-hearing users. It also excludes the significant number of Indian users who watch videos without sound in public spaces or shared living environments.

Implementing Accessibility: A Practical Roadmap

Phase 1: Audit (Week 1-2)

Assess your current website's accessibility status:

• Run automated tests using tools like axe DevTools, WAVE, or Lighthouse Accessibility audit
• Conduct manual testing with keyboard-only navigation
• Test with a screen reader (NVDA is free and widely used)
• Check colour contrast with the WebAIM Contrast Checker

Automated tools catch approximately 30-40% of accessibility issues. Manual testing is essential for catching the rest.

Phase 2: Quick Fixes (Week 3-4)

Address the issues that affect the most users with the least development effort:

• Add alt text to all meaningful images
• Fix colour contrast violations
• Add proper labels to all form fields
• Ensure all interactive elements are keyboard accessible
• Add skip navigation links for keyboard users
• Ensure the page language is set in the HTML lang attribute

Phase 3: Structural Improvements (Month 2-3)

• Implement proper heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3 in logical order)
• Add ARIA landmarks to identify page regions (navigation, main content, footer)
• Ensure all custom interactive components (accordions, tabs, modals) follow ARIA design patterns
• Add captions and transcripts to video content
• Implement focus management for single-page application navigation

Phase 4: Ongoing Maintenance

• Include accessibility testing in your QA process for every update
• Train content creators on writing accessible content (alt text, heading structure, link text)
• Conduct quarterly accessibility audits
• Include people with disabilities in user testing when possible

Accessibility and Indian Language Websites

Vernacular Indian websites face additional accessibility considerations:

• Screen reader support for Indian languages: Ensure your website's language attribute correctly identifies the content language so screen readers use the appropriate voice engine
• Font rendering: Some Indian language fonts render poorly at smaller sizes, creating readability issues even for sighted users. Test font legibility at 12px, 14px, and 16px on multiple devices.
• Right-to-left support: Urdu content requires proper RTL text direction handling
• Transliteration support: Users who type in Roman script but read in Devanagari (or other scripts) benefit from transliteration-aware search and input fields

The Business Case for Accessibility

Beyond legal compliance, accessibility delivers measurable business value:

• SEO improvement: Many accessibility practices (proper headings, alt text, semantic HTML, page structure) are also SEO best practices. Accessible websites consistently rank better.
• Expanded audience: 80 million potential customers with disabilities, plus their families and networks who prefer businesses that demonstrate inclusion.
• Better UX for everyone: Captions help users in noisy environments. High contrast helps users in sunlight. Clear navigation helps all users. Accessibility improvements benefit everyone.
• Brand reputation: Being known as an accessible, inclusive brand creates genuine competitive differentiation in the Indian market.
• Reduced legal risk: Proactive accessibility compliance protects against future regulatory requirements and legal challenges.

Start Building for Everyone

Web accessibility is not a feature you add at the end of a project. It is a design philosophy you embed from the beginning. Every decision, from colour palette selection to navigation structure to form design, has accessibility implications.

The good news is that most accessibility improvements are straightforward to implement and maintain. They do not require exotic technology or enormous budgets. They require awareness, intention, and consistent execution.

At AnantaSutra, accessibility is built into every website we design. We believe that a website that excludes users based on ability is a website that is not finished. If your current website has never been audited for accessibility, that audit is the first step toward serving every potential customer in your market.