The short answer: the Digital Government Authority's accessibility guideline was written for government websites, and the DGA's own announcement names private firms only where they develop or operate digital government activities. Nothing in it imposes the guideline on every private commercial website. But suppliers meet it anyway — in tenders, in portals built for buyers, and in vendor reviews.
The short answer: what actually applies to a private Saudi supplier (applicability table)
| Your situation | What applies | Practical baseline |
|---|---|---|
| You run a government entity's website or portal | The DGA guideline applies directly | Follow the guideline as published on dga.gov.sa |
| You develop or operate a digital government service | The DGA announcement names this role in the guideline's target audience | Build that service to the guideline, and expect the buyer to check |
| You sell to government or giga-projects from your own website | The guideline states no blanket mandate for ordinary commercial sites | Buyers may set accessibility requirements in tenders and reviews; WCAG AA is the baseline referenced |
| You serve the Saudi public generally | The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Law sets the Kingdom's equal-access direction | Treat accessibility as standing practice, not a one-off project |
What the DGA framework is — and who it was written for
The Digital Government Authority (DGA) is the Saudi authority for digital government. Its accessibility document — the "Guideline for Web Accessibility of Digital Channels Content to Serve People with Disabilities and the Elderly", document DGA-1-2-4-203, version 2.0 as published on dga.gov.sa — provides accessibility guidance based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Read the scope carefully, because vendor summaries blur it. Announcing the guideline, the DGA said it "targets Government Entities, Private Sector who develop or operate digital government related activities, in addition to individuals" — government entities, and private firms as builders or operators of government digital activity. It does not state that every Saudi business website is regulated by the DGA. Check the current version on dga.gov.sa: the document in force when you bid governs.
The WCAG baseline in plain language: what AA conformance asks of a website
WCAG is the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines: testable success criteria at levels A (minimum), AA (the level most policies and buyers reference) and AAA (highest). Its principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, robust. AA conformance asks a corporate website for things like these, stated exactly as the W3C states them:
- Text alternatives: Success Criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content (Level A) requires a text alternative for non-text content: informative images need alt text; decorative images must not interrupt assistive technology.
- Contrast: Success Criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) (Level AA) requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for text and images of text, and at least 3:1 for large-scale text (at least 18 point, or 14 point bold). Success Criterion 1.4.11 Non-text Contrast (Level AA) requires at least 3:1 against adjacent colours for user interface components and graphical objects.
- Keyboard and focus: Success Criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard (Level A) requires all functionality to be operable through a keyboard interface; 2.4.7 Focus Visible (Level AA) requires a visible focus indicator.
- Forms and errors: Success Criterion 3.3.1 Error Identification (Level A) requires input errors to be identified and described in text — a red border alone is not an error message.
- Readable structure: meaningful heading sequences, input labels, and Success Criterion 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (Level A), so components expose name and state to screen readers.
WCAG 2.2, the current W3C Recommendation, keeps those criteria and adds new ones, including Success Criterion 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum) (Level AA): a minimum target size of 24 by 24 CSS pixels, with exceptions. Ask which version a buyer names — WCAG 2.1 AA, or 2.2 — and audit against it. Our general web accessibility compliance guide covers WCAG practice in depth.
Where a private firm meets accessibility in practice: tenders, portals and buyer reviews
Accessibility reaches a private supplier through the buyer, not a DGA inspector: in tender documents that name a standard for deliverables, in supplier portals a firm must use, and in digital services a contractor builds or operates for a government client — a role the DGA guideline's audience explicitly includes.
Giga-project supply chains flow standards down: main contractors assess vendors, and your website and downloads are part of what they see. A site a reviewer cannot operate by keyboard, or PDFs a screen reader cannot read, become readiness findings. The practical question is not "are we regulated?" but "what will the buyer's checklist say, and can we evidence it?"
Arabic accessibility: RTL, screen readers and content that assistive tech can read
On bilingual sites, the Arabic version is where accessibility quietly fails. Right-to-left layout must mirror the interface without breaking logical reading order: assistive technology reads document order, not visual order, so a page that looks correct in RTL can still read backwards if its structure was built for English first.
Set each page's language and direction correctly in the markup, so screen readers use the right voice and pronunciation for Arabic, with the same heading structure, alt text and form labels as the English pages. Test the Arabic journeys separately: an English pass is not evidence about the Arabic site. Our Arabic RTL website checklist and RTL website design checklist cover the layout side.
The audit: how to find out where your site stands (automated, manual, user testing)
Audit in three layers. Automated scanning checks code-level criteria across many pages — missing alt text, contrast failures, unlabelled fields — but tests only part of WCAG; a clean automated report is not conformance. Manual testing works the real journeys as assistive-technology users do: keyboard only, then a screen reader, at high zoom.
The third layer is testing with users who have disabilities, which finds friction no tool predicts. Record findings criterion by criterion against your target WCAG version, including PDFs and portals, so the report works as buyer evidence.
Remediation order: fix the journeys buyers and citizens actually complete first
Fix in journey order, not page-count order. First, the journeys a buyer or citizen must complete: contact and enquiry forms, vendor-registration and login areas, and the downloads your tenders depend on.
Second, fix at template and component level — navigation, forms, buttons, document templates — so one repair propagates across the site. Third, fix content practices: alt-text discipline, heading order, video captions, tagged PDFs. For the craft of individual patterns, see our companion guide to accessible website design practices.
The accessibility statement: what to publish and keep true
Publish a short accessibility statement. Name the standard and version you target, what it covers, measures taken, known limitations with the alternative a user can request instead, a feedback contact, and its last review date.
Keep it true: a statement claiming conformance you have not tested will not survive a competent buyer review.
Overlays and quick-fix widgets: why they are not conformance
An accessibility overlay — the toolbar widget sold as instant compliance — changes presentation at the surface: text size, colours, spacing. It cannot supply missing text alternatives, repair a keyboard trap, label a field, fix heading structure or tag a PDF: those are properties of the site's own code and content.
Conformance is assessed on the website itself, and a buyer's reviewer tests the site, not the widget. Presenting an overlay as your remediation — or as vendor-review evidence — is the most common way suppliers fail this subject while believing they have passed it.
Common mistakes Saudi suppliers make
The first mistake is assuming the subject does not concern you because the DGA guideline addresses government websites — then meeting it inside a tender you are about to lose. The mirror-image mistake is assuming a blanket mandate exists and panic-buying whatever claims to satisfy it.
Other recurring errors: testing only the English site; forgetting that PDFs and downloads are part of the website a buyer reviews; copying another company's accessibility statement; and auditing once at launch, while later content uploads undo the fixes.
FAQ
Does the DGA accessibility guideline apply to private companies?
In the DGA's own announcement, the guideline targets government entities, the private sector who develop or operate digital government related activities, and individuals. It announces no duty covering every private commercial website; for your own site, requirements arrive through tenders, contracts and buyer reviews.
Which WCAG version and level should a Saudi supplier target?
Target Level AA. For the version, follow the governing document: the current DGA guideline on dga.gov.sa, and your tender or contract wording, which may name WCAG 2.1 or the newer WCAG 2.2. Audit against the named version.
Is an accessibility overlay or widget enough to conform?
No. An overlay adjusts presentation at the surface; it cannot add missing text alternatives, fix keyboard traps, label form fields or tag PDFs. Conformance is a property of the website's own code and content.
Do our PDF documents and tender downloads need to be accessible too?
In practice, yes: real journeys run through those documents, and an untagged PDF is unreadable to a screen reader. Tag PDFs at publication, or provide an accessible alternative, and include documents in your audit.
What should our accessibility statement include?
The standard and WCAG version you target, what it covers, measures taken, known limitations and the alternative for each, a feedback contact, and a review date. Keep it accurate — buyers read it as evidence.
Get a Saudi website built to the standard your buyers check (CTA)
If a tender or vendor review is coming, find out where your site stands before the buyer does. We audit Saudi corporate websites against the WCAG version your buyers name, and remediate in journey order — start with our web design services for Saudi Arabia for an itemised proposal within 24 business hours. See also our web development services for Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia hub.
