Accessibility for not for profit organisations
Charities, community organisations, advocacy bodies and disability services exist for the people they serve. We help make sure those people can actually use your website, your forms and your information, with advice scoped to the budget you really have. Not for profit rates are available.
Why does accessibility matter so much for not for profits?
Because the people a not for profit exists to serve are often the people most affected by inaccessible information. Clients, carers, volunteers, members and donors include people with disability, older people, people with low literacy and people on older phones. An inaccessible referral form or an untagged fact sheet does not just cost a conversion, it can stop someone reaching the support you were funded to provide. The Disability Discrimination Act applies whether or not you charge a fee. ExceedAbility helps you find what matters most, fix it, and build the skills to keep it fixed.
Who this covers
The not for profit sector is broad, from national charities with digital teams to local services run by a handful of staff and volunteers. What they share is a mission that depends on reaching people.
- Charities and foundations
- Community service organisations
- Disability service providers
- Disability led organisations
- Advocacy and rights bodies
- Peak and representative bodies
- Health promotion and support groups
- Mental health services
- Aged care and carer support
- Housing and homelessness services
- Legal and financial counselling services
- Membership associations
- Arts, sport and community groups
Why accessibility matters here
For a commercial business accessibility is a customer experience and risk question. For a not for profit it goes to the heart of the mission.
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The people you serve are the people most affected
Around one in five Australians has disability, and the proportion is far higher among the clients of many community, health and support services. If your intake form, your fact sheets or your appointment system do not work with a screen reader, a keyboard or a switch, the people you exist for are the ones locked out.
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The law applies whether or not you charge
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 covers goods, services and facilities provided for free as well as for payment. The 2025 AHRC guidelines set WCAG 2.2 AA as the benchmark for digital services, and they apply to not for profits in the same way they apply to banks.
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Funders and partners increasingly ask
Government funding agreements, tenders and corporate partners increasingly expect accessible services and accessible reporting. Being able to show an independent assessment and a remediation plan strengthens a grant application and a renewal.
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Volunteers and staff with disability
Volunteer sign up, rostering, learning platforms and internal systems are part of the picture too. Accessible tools widen the pool of people who can give their time and their skills.
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Every dollar raised counts
A donation or membership form that cannot be completed by keyboard, or that times out before a screen reader user finishes, turns away people who wanted to give. Fixing it is one of the cheapest fundraising improvements available.
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Living your own values
Most not for profits publish a commitment to inclusion. An accessible website, accessible documents and an accessible complaints process are where that commitment becomes visible.
Where accessibility problems occur
The problems that matter are rarely on the home page. They sit in the steps a person has to complete to get help, give help or have their say.
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Finding help
Service directories, eligibility information, location finders and search.
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Referral and intake
Enquiry, referral and self referral forms, eligibility checks and uploads.
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Booking and contact
Appointment booking, call back requests, chat and contact pathways.
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Information and consent
Fact sheets, client handbooks, privacy notices and consent forms.
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Giving and joining
Donation, membership, event registration and volunteer sign up.
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Feedback and accountability
Complaints, surveys, annual reports and impact reporting.
The recurring failure points
Referral and intake forms
Fields with no programmatic label, errors shown only in red, and third party form builders embedded with no keyboard access.
Donation and payment widgets
Hosted payment frames with unlabelled amount buttons, recurring gift toggles that are visual only, and session timeouts with no warning.
PDF fact sheets and reports
Untagged documents, reading order that follows the design rather than the meaning, charts with no text alternative, and no accessible version on request.
Plain language and Easy Read
Information written for funders rather than clients, with no Easy Read version for people with intellectual disability or low literacy.
Video and campaign content
Stories and appeals published without captions, transcripts or audio description, often on social platforms with automatic captions only.
Complaints and feedback
A complaints process that only works by email or a PDF form, which excludes the people most likely to need to use it.
NDIS and Australian disability services
Disability service providers carry a particular responsibility: almost every person they support has disability. Intake, service agreements, participant portals, rostering apps, complaints pathways and client information all need to work for participants, families, carers and support workers. Our dedicated page sets out where providers most often fall short and how we help.
What we assess
The people you serve meet you through a website, a form, a phone app, a printed fact sheet and an annual report. Accessibility has to hold across all of them, so we assess across the formats your clients, members, volunteers and donors actually use.
Websites
Public sites, campaign sites and content estates assessed against WCAG 2.2, with prioritised findings, code level fixes and a retest once the corrections land.
Web applications
Transactional interfaces, authenticated portals, dashboards and enterprise systems, including the custom components and single page frameworks that automated tools cannot judge.
Mobile applications
Native and hybrid applications tested with the platform screen readers and interaction settings your customers actually use, not emulated approximations.
Documents
PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and InDesign remediated to WCAG 2.2 AA and PDF/UA, at volume, plus Easy Read, large print, audio and braille where an alternative format is the right answer.
Design and development
Accessibility input before the build, so decisions about patterns, components and journeys are made once. Design reviews, delivery advice and accessibility written into your definition of done.
Self service and tools
Free checks and references your own team can run today. Useful for triage and for building internal capability, and a sensible first pass before an independent assessment.
How ExceedAbility helps
We know not for profit budgets are tight and often tied to grant cycles, so we offer not for profit rates to registered charities and not for profit organisations. Work is scoped in writing before any commitment, prioritised by impact on the people you serve, and can be staged across funding periods.
Focused journey reviews
An independent WCAG 2.2 AA review of the journey that matters most, such as referral, intake or donation, with plain English findings ranked by impact and a retest once fixes land.
Accessibility audits →Easy Read and alternative formats
Easy Read, large print, audio and braille versions of the information clients need most, written and checked for the people who will read them.
Alternative formats →Annual reports and documents
Annual reports, fact sheets, policies and forms remediated to WCAG 2.2 AA and PDF/UA, with templates fixed so next year's edition is accessible from the start.
Document remediation →Testing with lived experience
Testing with people who use screen readers, magnification, switch access and voice control, so you hear directly from people like the ones you serve.
User testing →Training for staff and volunteers
Practical sessions for the people who publish content, build forms and write documents, so accessibility becomes part of everyday work rather than a one off project.
Training programs →Plans that fit grant cycles
An accessibility action plan staged across funding periods, with evidence you can include in grant applications, acquittals and reports to your board.
Consulting and strategy →Free tools to get started today
No account, no cost. These are a sensible first step for any not for profit, and a good way for staff and volunteers to check new content before it goes live.
Common questions from not for profit teams
Plain answers to what CEOs, communications leads and service managers ask us most often.
Does accessibility law apply to not for profit organisations?
Yes. The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 applies to anyone providing goods, services or facilities in Australia, whether or not a fee is charged. Charities, community organisations and free services are covered in the same way as commercial providers. The 2025 AHRC guidelines set WCAG 2.2 Level AA as the benchmark, and many government funding agreements and tenders now ask for accessibility as well.
We have a small budget. Where should we start?
Start with the one journey that matters most to the people you serve, usually a referral, intake, enquiry or donation form, and the handful of documents people need most. A focused review of that journey and those documents, plus training for the staff who maintain them, delivers far more than a shallow scan of a whole site. Our free tools then help your team keep new content accessible between reviews, and our not for profit rates help the budget go further.
Our website was built by a volunteer or a donated agency. Is that a problem?
Not at all, and we are glad to work alongside them. Generous help often comes without accessibility expertise, so a short independent review gives your builder a clear, prioritised list to work through. We write findings that a capable generalist developer can act on, with code examples.
Do you produce Easy Read and accessible annual reports?
Yes. We remediate annual reports, fact sheets, policies and forms to WCAG 2.2 AA and PDF/UA, and produce Easy Read, large print, audio and braille alternatives. For documents you publish every year, we can fix the templates so future editions are accessible from the start.
Do you work with NDIS and disability service providers?
Yes. Disability service providers have a particular responsibility, because almost every person they serve has disability. See our page on NDIS and disability services accessibility for the touchpoints we see fail most often and how we help.
Can accessibility work be included in a grant application?
Often, yes. Many funders support capability building, digital inclusion and service improvement. We can provide a written scope, a staged plan and a cost estimate that you can include in an application, and the evidence you will need for the acquittal.
Tell us about the people you serve
Tell us your mission, the journey that worries you most and the budget you are working with. Not for profit rates are available, and we will come back with an honest, written scope.
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