Indian product teams generally encounter accessibility for the first time in a foreign customer's procurement questionnaire, and conclude it is an export requirement. It is not only that. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, administered by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, is a non-discrimination law that applies to both the public and private sectors, and its scope extends beyond web content to information and communication technology more broadly.
Separately, the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites are a mandatory policy for government websites, administered by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. GIGW has been revised since its original 2009 issue, so if you are bidding for public sector work, get the current version from the department rather than relying on a summary — including this one. What is consistent across versions is that it sets a conformance target derived from WCAG and covers far more than accessibility alone: it also prescribes content, security and quality requirements for government sites.
For a vendor, the practical effect is that public sector tenders in India carry accessibility as a stated requirement with a compliance certificate attached, in the same way a European buyer would ask for it. Firms that treat accessibility as something to retrofit find that the certificate is a gate they cannot pass in the time available, because the expensive parts — custom widgets without keyboard support, images without alternative text, forms without labels — are distributed across the whole product rather than concentrated somewhere.
The work itself is unglamorous and cheap when done during build. Everything operable by keyboard alone. Visible focus indicators. Real labels on form inputs rather than placeholder text pretending to be labels. Sufficient text contrast. Meaningful alternative text, with genuinely decorative images marked as decorative so screen readers skip them. A sensible heading hierarchy. Errors announced rather than only shown in red. None of that requires specialist knowledge; it requires someone deciding it matters.
Custom components are where the cost concentrates. A bespoke dropdown, modal, date picker or data grid assembled from generic elements has none of the keyboard behaviour or screen reader semantics that native elements provide free. Using an accessible component library is the single decision that saves the most effort, because the difficult behaviour is already correct and tested by people who specialise in it.
Beyond compliance there is a market argument that gets made too rarely in India. A large number of people here use the internet on low-end devices, in bright sunlight, over poor connections, in a second or third language, sometimes with an uncorrected vision impairment. Most accessibility work — contrast, clear labels, keyboard operability, text that scales — improves the experience for all of them. It is the rare requirement where the compliance case and the commercial case point the same way.
