WordPress for schools, nurseries and councils: what accessibility law requires of the site

Pages & images · By the Plain Hooks editorial team · Published 2026-10-31

Drawing of a public building with columns next to a web page headed Accessibility statement, with three ticked lines and a Report a problem button — Public bodies must meet a WCAG level and publish an accessibility statement with a way to report problems. Illustration: Plain Hooks.

A town hall, a school district or a nursery can run its website on WordPress like anyone else. What changes is the law: public bodies in the EU, the UK and the US have specific accessibility duties, with a named technical standard, published statements and deadlines. A theme sold as "WCAG compliant" is a start, but the obligation falls on the organisation and covers everything it publishes.

This guide sets out what the main rules require, which parts of a typical school or council site are covered, and the order in which to fix things. It is not legal advice; for a specific case, ask the body in charge of enforcement in your country or your legal adviser.

Which standard: WCAG level AA

All three regimes point to the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at level AA. The versions differ:

European Union: the Web Accessibility Directive (2016/2102) relies on the harmonised standard EN 301 549, whose web requirements follow WCAG 2.1 level AA.
United Kingdom: government guidance now says public sector sites meet the legal requirement if they meet WCAG 2.2 AA and publish an accessibility statement.
United States: the Department of Justice rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act names WCAG 2.1 level AA for state and local governments.

WCAG 2.2 adds criteria to 2.1 (visible focus not hidden by sticky headers, larger click targets, no redundant re-entry of information, accessible authentication) and drops one obsolete criterion on parsing. A site built to 2.2 AA therefore meets 2.1 AA as well, which makes 2.2 AA the sensible target for a new build anywhere.

Who is covered

European Union

The directive applies to the websites and apps of public sector bodies: ministries, regions and municipalities, but also bodies governed by public law, a category that can include public universities, hospitals and schools. It has applied to all public sector websites since September 2020 and to mobile apps since June 2021. Member states may exclude the websites of schools, kindergartens and nurseries, except for content linked to essential online administrative functions, so whether a school site is fully covered depends on how your country transposed the directive.

The directive also requires an accessibility statement for each site, a feedback mechanism so users can report problems or ask for inaccessible content in another form, and regular monitoring by national authorities. Private businesses fall under a different law, the European Accessibility Act, covered in our guide to accessible WordPress themes.

United Kingdom

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 cover central and local government and some charities and other non-government organisations, for example those mostly financed by public funds. Primary and secondary schools and nurseries are only partially exempt: content people need in order to use their services must be accessible, and the guidance gives the example of a form for choosing school meal preferences. Partially exempt organisations must still publish an accessibility statement.

United States

The Title II rule, published in April 2024 and summarised in the Department of Justice's fact sheet, applies to state and local governments and everything they run: public schools, community colleges and public universities, libraries, courts, police departments, transit agencies and parks programmes. Contractors who provide services on their behalf are covered through them. An interim final rule published in April 2026 moved the compliance dates: 26 April 2027 for public entities serving a population of 50,000 or more, and 26 April 2028 for smaller entities and special district governments.

What the exemptions do and don't cover

The exemptions are narrower than many site owners hope. Under the UK rules, PDFs and other documents published before 23 September 2018 need not be fixed unless people need them to use a service; pre-recorded audio and video published before 23 September 2020, live video, maps (as long as essential information such as an address is given another way), and third-party content you neither paid for nor developed are also exempt. The US rule has similar exceptions for archived content, for older documents and for content posted by third parties, but each comes with conditions. An archived item must have been created before the compliance date, kept only for reference, stored in an area marked as an archive and left unchanged. An old PDF stops being exempt the moment it is edited or if people still use it to apply for a service.

In practice that means the admissions form, the current term dates, the council tax page, the meeting agenda posted next week and the job application pack must all be accessible, wherever they sit on the site.

Where WordPress school and council sites usually fail

PDFs. Newsletters, lunch menus, policies and minutes are often uploaded as scanned or untagged PDFs. A screen reader may read nothing at all. Publish the content as a WordPress page where possible; when a PDF is required, export it from the source document with tags, headings and a document title, not from a scan.

Forms. Admission, absence-reporting and contact forms built with a form plugin need a visible label for every field, error messages that say what went wrong in text (not only in red), and no CAPTCHA that relies on sight alone. Test a full submission with the keyboard only.

Calendars and event plugins. Month-grid calendars are hard to use with a keyboard and a screen reader. Offer a list view of the same events, and check that date pickers can be operated without a mouse.

Images of text. Posters for open days and council notices posted as images must have the same information in the page text or in the alternative text. The difference between alternative text and a caption is explained in image captions in WordPress.

Navigation. Large public sites grow menus with dozens of items. Keep a predictable structure and a logical page order so people who navigate by headings and links can find services; ordering WordPress pages shows how WordPress decides that order.

Embedded video. Recorded council meetings and school videos need captions; a transcript helps everyone searching for a decision.

Accessibility overlays. Plugins that add a toolbar or claim to fix a site automatically do not make it conform. The European Commission's page on web accessibility states that overlays which do not make the website itself meet the standard are not an appropriate solution, and disability organisations have raised concerns about them. Fix the theme and the content instead.

The accessibility statement

In the EU and the UK, the statement is a legal requirement, and WordPress makes it easy to publish as an ordinary page linked from the footer of every page. It should say:

which standard the site aims to meet and whether it is fully, partially or not compliant;
which content is not accessible and why (an exemption, a disproportionate burden, or a fix still planned), with dates;
how to request content in another format and how to report a problem, with a contact that someone actually reads;
how to escalate a complaint to the enforcement body, and when the statement was last reviewed.

The EU publishes a model statement in an implementing decision, and the UK government publishes a sample statement. The US rule does not require a statement, but publishing one with a contact route is still good practice.

An order of work for a small team

List the services people use online (applications, payments, bookings, reporting) and test those journeys first, end to end, with a keyboard.
Check the theme with the 20-minute test from our theme accessibility guide: skip link, focus, zoom to 400%, contrast, headings.
Replace the most-used PDFs with pages, and set a rule that new documents are published accessibly from now on.
Audit form, calendar and slider plugins; replace those that cannot be fixed.
Train every editor on headings, link text and alternative text. Most new failures come from content added after launch.
Publish or update the accessibility statement, and review it at least once a year.

If an agency or supplier runs the site, put WCAG 2.2 AA and the statement in the contract. Under the UK rules, the public body remains legally responsible even when the website is outsourced.