Website Accessibility in Israel: What the Regulations Say and What to Test

This is a factual overview of the requirements as they appear in the sources, not legal advice. Whether a given obligation applies to a given business, and which exemptions are available to it, goes to a lawyer or to the Commission for Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities. What can be described: what is written, what the standard is, and what is actually tested on a page.

What the regulations require

The obligation to make internet services accessible sits in Chapter C of the regulations, and specifically in regulation 35. The regulations define an "internet service" as content in any format - text, documents, images or video - delivered over internet infrastructure, and provide that a party subject to the obligation shall display, in a prominent place on the site and in any application it operates, a statement including information about the accessibility adjustments it has made together with the accessibility coordinator's details. An accessible description of the regulation is published by Access Israel.

The standard referred to is Israeli Standard 5568, at conformance level AA, based on WCAG. Part 2 of the standard is published on gov.il as an official document.

The exemption bands by turnover

The table describes what appears in the sources and does not determine what applies to a given business. Two points matter: the exemptions are described as temporary rather than permanent, and the second band is conditioned on when the site began operating - meaning a new site is not in the same position as an established one. Anyone wanting to know what applies to them asks a lawyer or the Commission.

What is actually tested on a page

In practice, most defects found in a review repeat across sites:

• Contrast - the ratio between text colour and background, especially in light grey text and buttons.
• Alternative text - images with no alt, or an alt containing a filename.
• Keyboard navigation - not every element is reachable by Tab, or there is no visible focus indicator.
• Forms - a field with no associated label, and error messages that are not announced.
• Heading structure - levels skipped, or headings chosen by size rather than by structure.
• Video - no captions.

The fourth costs the most money at a business selling online, because a form that cannot be completed is a customer who cannot buy. It is also why this review pays for itself on grounds having nothing to do with the regulations, as described in website accessibility basics.

Who at the business owns this

The regulations mention an accessibility coordinator, and at a small business that is usually the owner. Operationally, what matters is not the title but that one person receives any approach and knows what to do with it.

In practice, an approach on accessibility arrives in two forms: somebody hitting a difficulty while trying to complete an action, or a notice pointing out a defect. The second calls for a faster response, and the first is the one that teaches you something - it points at a screen that does not work rather than at a clause in a standard.

So it is worth having that approach land somewhere that is read, and keeping a record of what was said and what was done. That is not bureaucracy: it is what lets you know whether the same defect recurs, and whether the fix actually resolved it.

What should the accessibility statement contain?

Under the regulations the statement is displayed in a prominent place and includes information about the accessibility adjustments made, together with the accessibility coordinator's details. Operationally that means three things: that the statement is reachable from every page rather than only the home page, that it describes what was actually done rather than generic wording, and that the contact details in it reach a person who answers.

The common failure is a statement copied from another site describing adjustments that were never made. Beyond the legal question, which goes to a lawyer, it also fails operationally: a person with a disability who reads a statement and finds it untrue gets in touch - and then that contact lands at an address nobody reads.

What costs what

The distinction between the last two rows and the rest is what decides whether this is a task or a project. Most sites find the first four rows cover the majority of defects found, which explains why an early review pays: it separates what can be closed this week from what needs planning.

What about an "accessibility widget" installed on the site?

There are tools that add a toolbar or plugin and offer adjustments from the side. What matters factually: the regulations point at the standard, and the standard concerns the content and code of the site itself - contrast, semantics, labels and navigation - not the presence of an external component.

So operationally, a plugin is not a substitute for reviewing the page. It can give a user extra control, and it does not turn an image with no alternative text into an image with alternative text. What is required to meet the obligation goes to a lawyer or a qualified accessibility professional; what is here is only a description of what the standard addresses.

How to build a test you can repeat

1. Pick five representative pages: home, a product or service, a contact form, checkout if there is one, and a content page.
2. Go through each using the keyboard alone, from the start through to submission.
3. Run an automated check for contrast and alternative text.
4. Record each defect with the page and the element, not as a general list.
5. Repeat the test after every significant change to the site.

Step five is what prevents regression. A site fixed once and then given a new template or a new marketing component returns to most of its defects, so a one-off review is an event rather than a state.

Sources

• Access Israel - website accessibility regulation, section 35
• SI 5568 part 2 - text on gov.il
• Kol Zchut - exemption from website and application accessibility
• Website accessibility basics
• Book a call