NDIS WEBSITE DESIGN Accessible by default. Not later.
NDIS website design has two readers and most provider sites are only built for one. Participants and their families are the obvious one. The other is the support coordinator working through a dozen providers in an afternoon, checking which supports you deliver, which areas you cover and whether you have room. The coordinator decides faster, and they decide more often.
If a participant cannot use the site, the site has already failed. Screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, magnified text and someone helping from the next chair are ordinary ways to browse in this sector, and most provider websites rule all four out before the first click lands.
Two readers.One site.
A coordinator is matching a person to a provider, often against a plan they are reading at the same time. They want four things on the page and they want them without scrolling: exactly which supports you deliver, written the way the plan writes them rather than in your own house language; which suburbs and regions you actually travel to; whether you are registered; and whether you have room right now. A site that answers those in ninety seconds gets shortlisted by someone who never rang to ask.
Participants and families are reading for something else. They want to know what it is actually like, in plain words and short sentences, with real photos of real people rather than stock images of hands being held. They want to know what happens after they get in touch, how long it takes, and who they will be dealing with. Jargon costs you more here than anywhere, because half of it is scheme vocabulary a new participant has not learned yet.
Underneath both of those sits accessibility, and it is a build decision rather than a feature. Real heading structure, contrast that holds up, visible keyboard focus, labelled form fields, alt text that says something, text that survives being enlarged, captions on video. In Australia the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 covers information and services delivered online, and the Australian Human Rights Commission points at WCAG as the standard to meet. For a disability provider it is also the most direct contradiction available: a site nobody can use, selling support for people who cannot use it.
Participants and their families are one audience. Support coordinators are the other, and they are the one almost no provider website was written for.
Five steps.Then live.
Step one is where most provider sites go wrong. Supports get described in the words the business uses internally, and coordinators search in the words the plan uses.
The same five steps run on every build, Starter through to Authority. What changes is how many supports and regions get their own page, not the method. See the full web design process.
Supports and areas
in the plan's wordsEvery support you deliver, written the way it appears in a plan and the way a coordinator searches for it, crossed against every region you travel to. What comes out is the page list, and it is usually longer than the site being replaced.
Two reading levels
coordinator and participantThe same information written twice: once dense and scannable for someone comparing providers, once in plain short sentences for a participant or a family member reading it for the first time. Neither is a simplified version of the other.
Accessibility build
WCAG 2.1 AA as the targetHeading structure, colour contrast, visible focus states, labelled fields, meaningful alt text, text that survives 200% zoom, captions on video. Checked with a keyboard and a screen reader before launch, not with a plugin afterwards.
The referral path
not a contact formWhat a coordinator sends and what a family sends are different messages, so they get different paths. Current capacity is stated rather than implied, and both routes end somewhere a person actually reads.
Build and launch
Astro, then liveBuilt on Astro with Tailwind. 95+ Lighthouse, under 2.5 seconds, Search Console connected and the sitemap submitted on launch day, so the site starts being found rather than sitting there.
The Starter
$1,800
3 to 5 pages covering your main supports and your main region, built to WCAG 2.1 AA with a referral path that works for coordinators and families. Live in 3 weeks.
The Growth
From $3,500
5 to 10 custom pages, one per support you want more referrals for, plus 30 location pages so every area you travel to has something of its own to rank with.
The Authority
Book a call
10 to 20 custom pages and 50 location pages, built for a provider delivering several support types across more than one region.
Accessibility is in every package at no extra charge, because a disability provider's website is the last place it should be an upsell. Every price is fixed before work starts, and any build can run on any support plan. See what every package includes.
What people ask before they book.
There is no NDIS rule that names a version of WCAG for a provider's own marketing website. What does apply is the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, which covers information and services delivered online, and the Australian Human Rights Commission points to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as the standard to meet. Beyond the legal question, an inaccessible website is the most direct contradiction a disability provider can put in front of a participant, and coordinators notice. Newcastle Web Co builds every provider site to WCAG 2.1 AA as standard.
Newcastle Web Co builds a 3 to 5 page provider site for $1,800 fixed, delivered in 3 weeks, with accessibility, SEO, schema and Google Business Profile alignment included rather than quoted separately. A fully custom build with 30 location pages starts at $3,500. Across the Australian market a provider website is commonly $2,500 to $10,000, and the wide spread is usually about whether accessibility and content were in the quote or added afterwards.
Six things: the supports you deliver named the way a plan names them, the suburbs and regions you travel to, whether you are registered, your current capacity or waitlist, a referral path that is separate from a general contact form, and plain-language explanations of what happens after someone gets in touch. Real photos of your own team and participants, with consent, do more than anything else on the page. Everything after that is optional.
Yes. The constraints are on how, not whether. The NDIS Code of Conduct expects communication that is honest, respectful of participants' dignity and free of pressure, and Australian Consumer Law rules out misleading claims about outcomes. In practice that means no promises about what a support will achieve, no urgency tactics, no using a participant's story without clear consent, and prices and inclusions stated plainly. We write to those expectations. We are not compliance advisers, and registration, audits and practice standards remain between you and your auditor.
More than a registered provider does, in practical terms. Registered providers appear in the NDIS provider finder, which is a discovery path unregistered providers do not have. If you work with self-managed and plan-managed participants, your website and your relationships with coordinators are close to the whole of how you get found. That is also why the coordinator half of the site matters so much: they are the ones doing the finding.
Tell us which supports you deliver, the regions you travel to and whether you have room, and we will come back with a fixed price and a page list. No obligation, and no hard sell.
Serving Newcastle and the Hunter. Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland, Cessnock, the Hunter Valley and Port Stephens, and remotely for providers anywhere in Australia.