Roughly one guest in fifty who walks through your door cannot read small text on a screen. Some of them use a screen reader, some pinch every page to double size, some just need more contrast than a designer thought looked good. All of them are choosing where to eat.

What the law asks

In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act has been read to cover restaurant websites and menus, and the standard everyone points at is WCAG 2.1 at level AA. Europe has the Accessibility Act, and Britain has the Equality Act. The wording differs. What they ask for barely does.

• Real text, structured as headings and lists, so a screen reader can move through it.
• Text that grows to double size without the page falling apart.
• Contrast of at least 4.5 to 1 between the words and what is behind them.
• Everything reachable without a touchscreen.
• Another way in, always — a printed menu, a readable web address, a person.

A PDF fails every line of that

A photograph of a printed menu, which is what most QR menus are, is a picture as far as a screen reader is concerned. There are no headings to jump between. The text does not reflow, so doubling the size means dragging the page around. Contrast is whatever the print designer chose. It is the least accessible way to publish a menu and the most common.

Contrast is where menus fail quietly

Restaurant branding loves grey on cream, gold on white, thin type on a photograph. It looks right on a laptop in an office. It disappears on a phone, outdoors, at the corner table with one lamp.

The check takes a second, and it is worth having it built into wherever you pick your colours, so a combination that fails cannot quietly ship. Choosing a palette that passes at the start costs nothing. Discovering it a year later means redoing the whole look.

Keep a way in that is not a code

A QR code cannot be scanned by someone who cannot see it. Print the plain web address underneath it, keep a stack of paper menus, and make sure a person can read the specials aloud. The code should be one of the ways to reach the menu.

Test it yourself, tonight

Turn on VoiceOver on an iPhone or TalkBack on Android and try to order a starter from your own menu. Ten minutes, no cost, and you will know more than any compliance badge will tell you.

Every rule in the law is one rule: publish the menu as words, not as a picture of words.