WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility on maritime corporate websites

A typical maritime corporate website fails WCAG 2.2 AA badly. The audits we run surface 40 to 80 issues across colour contrast, focus indication, form labelling, alt text and keyboard navigation. None of it is malicious; almost all of it is the result of designers and developers who never had accessibility in scope.

The case for fixing it isn’t only legal. It’s commercial. A fleet director with a vision impairment, a port worker using a screen reader, a procurement lead navigating by keyboard because their mouse died, a recruiter at sea on a small phone in poor light: all of them are blocked by inaccessible sites. WCAG conformance is the minimum standard for taking your audience seriously.

What WCAG 2.2 AA actually means

WCAG 2.2 AA is the working standard for most B2B compliance work. It adds nine new success criteria to WCAG 2.1, mostly around target sizes, dragging movements, focus appearance and authentication that doesn’t require recall. The full standard runs to dozens of criteria, but on a typical maritime corporate site, the failures cluster in five areas.

1. Colour contrast

The largest single source of failures. WCAG AA requires 4.5:1 contrast for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Brand palettes built around navy-on-grey, light grey body copy on white backgrounds, blue links on dark blue backgrounds and “elegant” low-contrast typography fail every time.

The fix is rarely brand-breaking. Darken the body text by 15%. Adjust link colours. Bump the contrast on form placeholder text. The brand reads exactly the same; the text becomes legible.

2. Focus indication

Tab through your homepage. Can you see where the keyboard focus is? On most maritime sites we audit, the focus ring is invisible (designers turned it off because it “looks ugly”) or buried in matching colour. WCAG 2.2 specifically requires visible focus appearance. A custom focus state, branded if you must, is non-negotiable.

3. Form labels and errors

Contact forms, RFP forms and quote-request forms commonly fail on:

• Placeholder-only labels (the placeholder disappears when typing).
• Error messages that rely on red colour alone.
• Required-field markers that are visual asterisks with no text alternative.
• Password fields with no clear instructions for required format.

Each of these is a five-minute fix per field.

4. Alt text

Maritime sites are image-heavy. Vessel photos, port aerials, equipment renders, headshots, terminal photography. Most of them have no alt text or have alt text that says “image1.jpg” or “vessel”. Useful alt text describes the meaningful content for someone who can’t see the image. “Aframax tanker MV Example loading at Rotterdam Europoort” beats “tanker”.

Decorative images (background patterns, ornamental dividers) should have empty alt (alt=""), not missing alt.

5. Keyboard navigation

Mega-menus, search overlays, modal dialogs and chat widgets are the usual failure points. Tabbing into a mega-menu that you can’t tab out of, a modal that keyboard-traps focus, a chat widget that pops over the entire page and can’t be dismissed by Escape: all common, all WCAG failures, all fixable.

How to approach a maritime accessibility programme

Audit first. Run an automated tool (axe DevTools, WAVE, Lighthouse) for the easy wins. Then manual: tab through every page, test with NVDA or VoiceOver, run colour contrast on every text-on-background combination. Automated tools surface roughly 30% of issues; manual surfaces the rest.

Prioritise by traffic. Fix the homepage, the top three service pages, the contact form and the vessel particulars or equipment product pages first. Tail content gets fixed in the next sprint.

Build accessibility into the next redesign brief. Adding accessibility to a finished site is more expensive than building it in. If you’re commissioning a new build, require WCAG 2.2 AA conformance in the SoW with a third-party audit at the end.

Keep an accessibility statement. A page that documents your conformance level, known issues, contact route for accessibility queries and last review date. Required in some jurisdictions, good practice in all of them.

The commercial argument

Accessibility work is unsexy. It doesn’t generate the kind of demos that win awards. But it makes your site usable for a population of buyers, partners and crew that you currently exclude, and it removes a category of legal and reputational risk that grows year by year. The maritime industry is increasingly scrutinised on ESG. Digital accessibility belongs in that scrutiny.

A well-built maritime corporate site can hit WCAG 2.2 AA without compromising brand or design quality. Most of the friction comes from doing it late.