You spent hours building your website. You picked the right fonts, sweated over the colour palette, agonised over button placement, and finally hit publish with a satisfied sigh. Job done. Right?
Maybe not. Because there’s a chance that a significant chunk of your visitors — roughly one in four — are finding your site frustratingly difficult, if not impossible, to use. Not because your design is bad, but because website accessibility probably wasn’t on your radar when you built it.
Don’t feel bad. Most people don’t know this is even a thing until someone points it out. That’s exactly what we’re here for.
What Is Website Accessibility, Exactly?
Website accessibility means designing and building your site so that everyone can use it — including people with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive disabilities.
Think about it this way: a physical shop has ramps for wheelchair users and braille on signs. Your website needs its own version of that. When it doesn’t have it, a whole group of people are basically locked out at the front door.
We’re not talking about a tiny minority here. According to the World Health Organisation, over a billion people worldwide live with some form of disability. Many of them are your potential customers, readers, or clients. If your site doesn’t work for them, they’ll simply leave — and you’ll never know why.
Why Should You Care? (Beyond Being a Decent Human)
Okay, yes, the moral case is obvious. But let’s be honest — sometimes people need a few extra reasons to take action. Here are some good ones.
It’s Good for SEO
Accessibility and SEO are basically best friends. Many of the things that make a site accessible — clear heading structure, descriptive image alt text, meaningful link labels, fast load times — are the same things search engines reward. Fixing your accessibility often means fixing your rankings at the same time. Win-win.
It Reduces Legal Risk
In many countries, inaccessible websites are increasingly landing businesses in legal trouble. Accessibility lawsuits have been on the rise, and laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the US and similar legislation elsewhere are being applied to websites more frequently. Getting ahead of this now is a lot cheaper than dealing with a legal challenge later.
It Improves the Experience for Everyone
Here’s the thing most people don’t realise: accessibility improvements almost always make a site better for everyone, not just people with disabilities. Captions on videos help people watching in noisy environments. Good colour contrast helps people reading in bright sunlight. Clear, simple navigation helps people who are just in a rush. Accessibility is really just good design in disguise.
The Most Common Accessibility Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)
You don’t need to overhaul your entire website overnight. Start with the basics. These are the issues that affect the most people and are often the easiest to fix.
1. Images Without Alt Text
Screen readers — software used by people with visual impairments — read out alt text to describe images. If your images have no alt text, or alt text like “image1.jpg”, a visually impaired user has no idea what they’re looking at.
The fix: Add a short, descriptive alt text to every meaningful image on your site. Describe what the image shows, not what it is. For example, instead of “photo” write “a person reading a laptop at a coffee shop.” If an image is purely decorative, use an empty alt attribute (alt=””) so screen readers skip it.
2. Poor Colour Contrast
Light grey text on a white background looks sleek. It also makes your content nearly unreadable for people with low vision or colour blindness — and honestly, it’s a bit of a headache for everyone else too. (This is the same reason dark mode design needs to be done thoughtfully — contrast matters regardless of which palette you choose.)
The fix: Use a contrast checker tool (there are plenty of free ones online) to ensure your text meets the minimum contrast ratio recommended by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Aim for a ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text.
3. No Keyboard Navigation
Many people with motor disabilities can’t use a mouse. They navigate websites entirely using a keyboard — tabbing through links, buttons, and form fields. If your site doesn’t support keyboard navigation properly, these users are stuck.
The fix: Test your site by unplugging your mouse and navigating using only the Tab, Enter, and arrow keys. Every interactive element — links, buttons, forms — should be reachable and usable. Make sure there’s a visible focus indicator (the little outline that shows where you are on the page) rather than hiding it with CSS.
4. Missing or Vague Link Text
“Click here.” “Read more.” “Learn more.” These phrases make sense when you can see the surrounding context. But screen readers often pull up a list of all links on a page — and a list that says “click here, click here, click here” is completely useless.
The fix: Make your link text descriptive. Instead of “click here to read our guide,” write “read our beginner’s guide to website accessibility.” It takes two extra seconds and makes a big difference.
5. Videos Without Captions
Deaf and hard-of-hearing users rely on captions to access video content. Without them, a huge chunk of your video library is simply inaccessible. And as mentioned earlier, captions help everyone — not just those with hearing impairments.
The fix: Add closed captions to your videos. Most video platforms including YouTube generate automatic captions, though you should review and correct them since auto-captions are notoriously enthusiastic about making up words.
6. Forms That Confuse Everyone
Contact forms, newsletter signups, checkout pages — these are some of the most important parts of any website. They’re also where accessibility often falls apart. Missing labels, unclear error messages, and fields that only highlight in red (useless for colour-blind users) all create barriers.
The fix: Every form field needs a visible, descriptive label. Error messages should explain what went wrong in plain language. Don’t rely on colour alone to communicate anything — use icons or text alongside colour cues.
How to Check Your Website’s Accessibility Right Now
You don’t need to hire a specialist to do a basic audit. There are free tools that can scan your site and flag common issues in minutes.
- WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool): A free browser extension and web tool that visually highlights accessibility errors on any page.
- Google Lighthouse: Built into Chrome’s developer tools, it includes an accessibility audit alongside performance and SEO checks.
- axe DevTools: Another browser extension that provides detailed accessibility reports without overwhelming you with jargon.
Run your homepage through any of these tools and you’ll have a list of things to fix within minutes. Don’t try to fix everything at once — prioritise the issues that affect the most users and work through them steadily.
Accessibility Is a Journey, Not a Destination
Here’s something nobody tells you: no website is ever perfectly accessible. Web content is constantly changing, browsers evolve, and accessibility standards get updated. The goal isn’t perfection — it’s continuous improvement.
Start small. Fix the alt text. Check the contrast. Test with a keyboard. Each small improvement means more people can actually use what you’ve built, and that’s the whole point of having a website in the first place.
Your site might not be invisible to everyone right now. But with a few targeted fixes, you can make sure it’s welcoming to a lot more people — and that’s a genuinely good thing, for your visitors and for your website’s performance alike.