Accessibility Rules for Government and Public Apps in India

Four sources set the requirement.

Government websites and apps follow the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites and Apps, GIGW 3.0, which adopts the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 at level AA. IS 17802, in two parts, sets accessibility requirements and conformance testing for ICT products and services, and is aligned with the European EN 301 549 standard. For practical purposes, building and testing to WCAG 2.1 AA meets the core of all of them.

WCAG is organised around four principles. In practice, most failures come from a short list.

The Supreme Court's 2025 directions arose from people who could not complete digital KYC: acid attack survivors asked to blink for a liveness check, and blind users unable to align a document in a camera frame. Regulators including RBI and SEBI have since told regulated entities to make digital onboarding accessible. Offer alternatives to blink-based liveness, accept thumb impressions where signatures are not possible, give audio guidance for camera capture, and never rely on image-only CAPTCHAs.

If the only way through your onboarding is to blink at a camera, some customers cannot become customers.

GIGW also covers quality and language. Public apps should support Indian languages properly: correct Unicode rendering, language attributes so screen readers pronounce text correctly, and plain wording. Voice input and audio output help users with low literacy as well as users with disabilities.

Accessibility is cheapest when it is part of the design system and the definition of done. Automated tools catch perhaps a third of issues; the rest need manual keyboard and screen reader testing, ideally with users with disabilities. Government projects typically require an audit and a published accessibility statement, and websites may seek certification under the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification directorate's website quality scheme.