Accessibility: building a site everyone can actually use

What it actually means day to day

Accessibility is not a special version of your site. It is a set of properties the normal site has: text that can be read, controls that can be operated without a mouse, content whose structure makes sense when read aloud.

Someone using a screen reader hears your page rather than sees it. If your headings are just big bold text rather than actual headings, they cannot skim. If your images have no descriptions, they hear "image" and learn nothing. If your form fields have no labels, they hear "edit text" and have to guess.

The legal position in the UK

The Equality Act 2010 requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and that applies to services delivered through a website, not only to physical premises.

In practice, enforcement against small businesses is rare, and this guide is not legal advice. But "rare" is not "never", and the reputational side is real. More to the point, the adjustments involved are usually small.

The recognised standard is WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Level AA is the level most organisations aim for and the one referenced by public sector regulations.

The problems that come up most

You can fix the majority of real-world accessibility issues by addressing five things.

• Colour contrastLight grey text on white is the classic. It looks elegant on a designer's monitor and is unreadable in sunlight or with any visual impairment. Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.
• Missing alt textEvery image that conveys information needs a short description. Decorative images should be explicitly marked as decorative so screen readers skip them rather than reading a filename aloud.
• Unlabelled form fieldsA placeholder is not a label — it disappears when you start typing, and screen readers may not announce it. Every field needs a real label. This matters for getting enquiries too.
• Keyboard trapsTry pressing Tab repeatedly through your site. You should be able to reach every link and button, and always see which one is focused. If focus vanishes or gets stuck in a pop-up, that is a serious barrier.
• Headings used for stylingHeadings should describe structure, not be chosen for their size. Skipping from an h1 to an h4 because it looked right breaks navigation for screen reader users — and confuses search engines the same way.

Why it helps your SEO too

Accessible markup and search-friendly markup are largely the same thing. Proper heading structure tells a screen reader how the page is organised and tells Google the same. Alt text describes an image to a blind visitor and to an image crawler. Descriptive link text helps both.

This is why accessibility work rarely feels wasted even in narrow commercial terms — see technical SEO basics for the overlap.

Sources and further reading

• WCAG 2.2 quick reference (opens in a new tab)W3C Web Accessibility InitiativeThe standard itself, filterable by level.
• Introduction to web accessibility (opens in a new tab)W3C WAIThe best starting point if this is new.
• Equality Act 2010 (opens in a new tab)legislation.gov.ukThe UK legislation itself.
• Contrast checker (opens in a new tab)WebAIMPaste two colours, get a pass or fail.

Common questions

Is website accessibility a legal requirement in the UK?

The Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments for disabled people accessing services, and that includes online services. Public sector bodies have stricter, explicit regulations. For a small private business the risk of enforcement is low, but the obligation exists in principle. This is general information rather than legal advice.

Will an accessibility overlay or widget fix my site?

Generally no. Those plug-in toolbars that offer to adjust contrast and font size do not fix underlying problems like missing labels or bad structure, and disability advocacy groups broadly regard them as ineffective. Fixing the site itself is the only reliable route.

How do I check my site for accessibility problems?

Run Lighthouse in Chrome for automated checks, which catches contrast and missing alt text. Then do the manual ones automation cannot: navigate by keyboard only, and read your page content aloud to see whether it still makes sense without the visual layout.