Legal & compliance

Website accessibility for Jersey businesses: what the Discrimination Law means

About one in five islanders has a longstanding health condition, and many use your website with a screen reader, a keyboard or zoom. Where Jersey law stands, and what to fix first.

By Josh, Web Designer, Developer & SEO Updated 30 September 2026 7 min read How we check our facts

In the 2021 census, about one in five Jersey residents (opens in a new tab) reported a longstanding physical or mental health condition, and 15% said it limits their daily activities. Some of them will try to use your website with a screen reader, only a keyboard, or the text zoomed right up. We checked the Discrimination (Jersey) Law 2013 and the web accessibility standard in September 2026.

This is a plain-English guide, not legal advice.

What the law says

The Discrimination (Jersey) Law 2013 (opens in a new tab) covers seven protected characteristics, and disability was added on 1 September 2018. Under Article 22, anyone providing goods, services or facilities to the public, paid or free, must not discriminate in refusing them, in the terms offered, or in the manner of providing them. “Services” includes those of any profession, trade or business.

The Law never mentions websites. It is a reasonable reading that your website is part of the manner in which you provide your service, but we found no Jersey tribunal decision or official guidance that confirms it. Treat accessibility as likely to be covered, not as settled either way.

The reasonable adjustments duty

Article 7A requires a service provider to take reasonable steps when a practice puts a disabled person at a substantial disadvantage, and to provide auxiliary aids and services. You cannot charge the person for the adjustment. What counts as reasonable depends on how effective and practical the step is, what it costs, and the size and resources of your business.

Unlike the UK rule for service providers, the Jersey duty applies once you know, or should reasonably know, about the person’s disability and the disadvantage. In practice: if a customer tells you they cannot use your booking form with a screen reader, you are expected to do something reasonable about it, such as taking the booking by phone straight away and fixing the form.

If someone complains

Discrimination complaints about services go to the Jersey Employment and Discrimination Tribunal (opens in a new tab), normally within eight weeks. The Tribunal can make a declaration or a recommendation, or award compensation, which has been capped at £30,000 since July 2025.

The standard to aim for: WCAG 2.2 AA

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (opens in a new tab) are the standard everyone measures against. Version 2.2 was published in October 2023, and a site that meets 2.2 also meets the older versions. The Government of Jersey’s own site was built to WCAG 2.1 level AA. Level AA is the sensible target for a business site. The newest AA and A requirements are:

Keyboard focus is never completely hidden behind sticky headers or cookie banners.
Anything you can drag, such as a slider, also works with a simple click or tap.
Buttons and links are at least 24 by 24 pixels, or spaced out enough to hit.
Logging in never depends on a memory test or puzzle, and allows password managers.
Help, such as your phone number or contact link, stays in the same place on every page.
Forms do not make people type the same information twice.

The fixes that matter most

Contrast. Text that stands out clearly from its background, including grey text and text on photos.
Alt text. A short description on every meaningful image; none on decorative ones.
Forms. A visible label on every field, and error messages that say what went wrong.
Keyboard. Everything works with the Tab key, and you can always see where you are.
Headings and links. Headings in order, and link text that makes sense out of context (not “click here”).
Zoom. Never block pinch-to-zoom on phones.
Video. Captions on anything with speech.
Another way in. A phone number or email next to every form, so nobody is stuck.

You can test much of this yourself: put the mouse away and use your site with the Tab key, or run the free Lighthouse check built into Google Chrome, which scores accessibility out of 100. Our own pages score 100 on it, and we aim every site we build at WCAG level AA. For the rest of the legal picture, see what a Jersey business website must show.

New to some of these terms? Our Jargon Buster explains website and marketing language in plain English.