Web accessibility — the topic everyone in Azerbaijan skips

Web accessibility is the part of building a site that almost no Baku studio talks about and almost no client asks about. It also affects a meaningful number of your actual users — somewhere between 5 and 15 percent depending on category — and it determines whether your site is legally defensible in the markets your business might expand into. The cost of getting it right at build time is small. The cost of retrofitting it later, or losing customers who quietly bounce because the site is unusable for them, is much higher. This is the practical version of WCAG compliance.

Who actually needs an accessible website

The mental image of "an accessibility user" tends to be "a person who is fully blind." That's a real user. It's also a small minority of the people who benefit from accessibility work.

The wider audience:

Visually impaired users — low vision, colour blindness, light sensitivity. About 5–7% of the adult population.
Users with motor impairments — Parkinson's, RSI, temporary injury, anyone who can't use a mouse smoothly. About 2–3%.
Users with cognitive differences — dyslexia, ADHD, anxiety. 8–12% combined.
Older users — 60+, accessibility features make a bigger difference than the user themselves articulates.
Users in situational impairment — bright sunlight on the screen, holding a child, on a slow connection, on a small screen, with broken audio. Almost everyone, occasionally.

An accessible site works better for all of these, not just the first category. The most common framing — "accessibility is about disability" — under-counts the audience by an order of magnitude.

What WCAG compliance actually requires

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the international standard, currently at version 2.2. It defines three levels:

Level A — minimum legal floor in many jurisdictions. Very low bar; failing this means the site is actively broken for accessibility users.
Level AA — the realistic professional standard. Required for government sites in the EU, US, UK, and increasingly others. Should be the default target for any commercial site.
Level AAA — aspirational. Some criteria are difficult or impossible to achieve on certain content types. Not realistic as a blanket target.

For a Baku business in 2026, the right target is WCAG 2.2 AA. Below that is leaving users behind; above that is engineering vanity in most cases.

The accessibility checklist that matters in practice

WCAG has 78 success criteria across three levels. About 25 of them produce 90% of the value. These are the ones to focus on.

Visual (the most common failures)

Contrast ratio. Body text needs 4.5:1 contrast against background. Large text (18px+ bold, or 24px+ regular) needs 3:1. UI elements like form borders need 3:1. Check every text-on-background pair in your brand palette.
Don't convey information by colour alone. A red "error" without an error icon or text label fails users with colour blindness.
Text resize. Users must be able to zoom to 200% without content breaking. Test it.
Focus indicators. Every interactive element must show a visible focus state when navigated to with the keyboard. Most sites with custom CSS hide focus states because designers consider them ugly. That's a fail.

Keyboard navigation

The entire site must be navigable with Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, Space, and arrow keys. No mouse-only interactions.
Custom dropdowns, sliders, modals must implement keyboard handling explicitly.
Skip links — "Skip to main content" — must exist at the top of every page.
Focus must not get trapped (a modal that won't let you Tab out is a trap).

Screen readers

Every image needs alt text. Decorative images get alt=""; meaningful images get a description.
Form fields must have associated labels — not just placeholder text.
Semantic HTML matters. <button> for buttons, <a> for links, headings in order (h1 → h2 → h3 without skipping).
ARIA roles only where semantic HTML can't do the job. The most common mistake is over-using ARIA when plain HTML would work.

Content

Page titles are descriptive and unique per page.
Headings are used in structure, not just for visual styling.
Link text describes the destination — "Read more" is a fail; "Read the 2026 report" is a pass.
Language attribute set on the HTML element (lang="az", lang="en", lang="ru").

How to actually test

You don't need expensive tools to do most accessibility testing. Three free tools cover 70% of the ground:

axe DevTools (browser extension by Deque). Run it on every page. Fixes most contrast, alt-text, and ARIA misuse.
Lighthouse Accessibility audit. Built into Chrome. Catches the obvious problems.
Keyboard test. Disconnect your mouse. Navigate the site with the keyboard for 15 minutes. Anywhere you get stuck is a fix.

For deeper testing:

Screen reader: NVDA (free, Windows) or VoiceOver (free, Mac). Set yourself a task — "complete the contact form" — using only the screen reader. The friction reveals problems.
Real users. The best test. If you have a user research budget, recruit one or two participants with accessibility needs and watch them try to complete a task on your site.

The cost of doing accessibility at build time

For a competently-built site where accessibility is part of the brief from day one: 5–10% extra build cost. The work is mostly about choosing the right HTML elements, designing focus states intentionally, picking a brand palette that passes contrast, and testing as you go.

The cost of retrofitting accessibility into an existing site that wasn't built with it in mind: 25–60% of the original build cost, sometimes more. The site has to be partly rebuilt — different HTML structure, redesigned components, often a refreshed colour palette.

The conclusion: ask for accessibility from day one of the brief. Don't wait.

The return — beyond ethics

The accessibility argument is often framed as ethical, which it is. It's also commercial.

SEO. Google explicitly considers accessibility signals (semantic HTML, alt text, language attributes, headings) as ranking factors. An accessible site ranks better.
Conversion. Users who can use the site convert. Users who can't bounce. The bounce is invisible — they don't email you to complain, they just leave.
Legal. If your business expands into the EU, US, UK, or several other markets, an inaccessible site is a legal risk. Lawsuits are increasing, especially in the US. Retrofit cost includes legal fees.
Reputation. A small but visible audience — accessibility advocates, journalists, NGO buyers — actively avoids inaccessible sites.
Talent. Increasingly, candidates evaluating your company check your site's accessibility. The best candidates notice.

The specifically Azerbaijani context

Azerbaijan doesn't currently have a strong national accessibility law analogous to the ADA or the EAA, but the international standards apply when:

Your business sells into Europe or North America.
Your site needs to interface with public-sector clients.
You're applying for EU-related funding or partnerships.
You're a multinational subsidiary required to meet group-level standards.

Even setting all of those aside, the local user base includes accessibility users in the same proportions as anywhere else. The site is for them too.

At Qaynaq, every site we ship is built to WCAG 2.2 AA as a default, not as a premium add-on. If you want an accessibility audit on an existing site, with a prioritised fix list and estimated user impact, write to salam@qaynaq.com with the URL.