How to Improve Website Accessibility: A Comprehensive Guide

Imagine trying to navigate a website when you can’t see the text, can’t use a mouse, or can't hear the crucial video instructions. 

For millions of people with disabilities, this is a daily reality on an inaccessible website.

The digital world should be open to everyone. Yet, many website owners unintentionally exclude a significant portion of their audience—individuals with disabilities—simply by overlooking fundamental accessible design and development practices. 

This exclusion doesn't just alienate potential customers; it exposes your business to legal risks and severely limits your market reach. 

Accessibility is no longer a niche consideration; it is a core component of quality web design, essential for web performance and business success.

This article will provide an introduction to web accessibility, outline the key accessibility standards you must follow.

Definition of Website Accessibility

Website accessibility refers to the practice of ensuring that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate the web, and interact with the website content. 

This includes a wide range of impairments, often referred to as disability, such as:

• Visual: Blindness, low vision, and color blindness.
• Auditory: Deafness and hearing loss.
• Physical/Motor: Inability to navigate a website using a standard mouse (relying on keyboard or other input devices), and limited fine motor control.

Cognitive/Neurological: Learning disability, attention deficit disorders, and seizure disorders.

Importance of Accessibility for All Users

Building an accessible website is fundamentally about improving the user experience for everyone.

• Expanded Reach: You instantly expand your potential customer base by making your site accessible to people with disabilities, a large and growing demographic.
• Improved SEO: Many accessibility best practices—like clear semantic HTML and descriptive alt text—naturally align with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, helping your content rank better.
• Enhanced Usability: Accessibility features designed for users with disabilities, such as clear Typography Hierarchy, high Color Theory contrast, and keyboard navigation, benefit from an accessible web experience for all users, especially people using mobile devices.
• Reduced Legal Risk: Non-compliance with accessibility standards can lead to costly legal action and compliance mandates. This underscores the need to ensure website accessibility.

Overview of Legal Requirements and Standards

While accessibility is a moral imperative, it is also increasingly a legal requirement globally. The primary international standards provide the framework, which is then adopted by national laws.

Understanding Accessibility Standards

The foundation of web accessibility compliance lies in globally recognized accessibility guidelines. Adhering to these standards provides a clear, measurable pathway to an inclusive web content.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the definitive, globally accepted standard for digital accessibility, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as part of the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Overview of WCAG Principles

WCAG is structured around four core design principles, summarized by the acronym POUR. These principles are key to creating an accessible experience.

1. Perceivable: Users must be able to perceive the information presented (it cannot be invisible to all their senses). This includes providing text alternatives for non-text web content and making content distinguishable (sufficient color contrast).
2. Operable: Users must be able to successfully interact with the interface. This means all functionality should be available via a keyboard, and users must have enough time to read and navigate web content.
3. Understandable: Users must be able to understand the information and the operation of the user interface. Content should be readable, and the interface should be predictable and consistent.
4. Robust: Website meets the criteria to be reliably interpreted by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

Levels of Conformance: A, AA, AAA

WCAG defines three levels of conformance, indicating the rigor of the requirements:

• Level A (Minimum): The most basic level of accessibility. Failure to meet these criteria makes it impossible for some individuals with disabilities to access the content.
• Level AA (Target): This is the internationally recognized standard that most organizations, government bodies, and legal requirements target. Meeting AA eliminates significant accessibility barriers for a broad range of disability types.
• Level AAA (Highest): Achieving AAA makes web content fully accessible to the widest possible audience, but it is generally not required for accessibility compliance, as some criteria are impractical for all content.

Key Guidelines to Follow

A few crucial accessibility guidelines that address accessibility barriers include:

• Provide Text Alternatives: All non-text content (images, charts, etc.) must have a text equivalent.
• Provide Captions and Transcripts: Media must be website accessible to users with hearing impairments.
• Ensure Keyboard Accessibility: All interactive elements must be reachable and operable using only the keyboard. This helps users with disabilities navigate a website using their preferred method.

Use Sufficient Contrast: Text and images of text must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (for Level AA) to ensure readability for users with low vision.

Other Relevant Standards

Beyond the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, various jurisdictions have their own regulatory frameworks that incorporate or are based on WCAG. These are all web accessibility standards.

• Section 508: A U.S. federal law requiring that federal agencies' electronic and information technology be accessible to people with disability. It now references and largely aligns with WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
• ADA Compliance: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the U.S. is civil rights legislation that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. Courts increasingly interpret the ADA to apply to commercial websites, making WCAG 2.1 Level AA the practical benchmark for accessibility compliance.
• EN 301 549: The European standard for ICT accessibility. It covers a wide range of technologies, including web pages, and is closely harmonized with WCAG.

Assessing Current Accessibility

You cannot fix what you do not measure. A thorough audit is the first critical step toward making your website accessible.

Conducting an Accessibility Audit

An audit identifies specific areas of non-conformance on your site, often revealing accessibility problems.

Tools for Auditing Accessibility

• Automated Accessibility Tools: Browser extensions (e.g., WAVE, Lighthouse) and dedicated scanning services can quickly flag common, easily detectable accessibility issues like missing alt text and insufficient color contrast. These are often referred to as accessibility tools or a free accessibility checker.

Manual Testing: Automated tools only catch about 30-40% of issues. Manual testing is essential for evaluating subjective but crucial criteria, such as navigation flow, keyboard operability, and the logical structure of website content.

User Testing with Diverse Groups

Technical adherence to accessibility guidelines is necessary but not sufficient. Real-world user feedback is invaluable to improve web accessibility.

• Importance of Involving Users with Disabilities: Testing with real individuals with disabilities who use screen readers, screen magnifiers, or only a keyboard will reveal accessibility issues that technical audits overlook. They expose the practical impact of accessibility barriers.
• Methods for User Testing:
• Recruit participants who rely on assistive technology.
• Observe participants completing common tasks (e.g., signing up, making a purchase).
• Focus on scenarios that test keyboard-only navigation and screen reader output.

Implementing Accessibility Improvements

Effective accessibility is a combination of thoughtful accessible design, clear content, and robust technical implementation. These are the key aspects of web accessibility.

Design Considerations

Accessibility starts on the drawing board. Designers should prioritize an inclusive experience, often using wireframe tools to map out usable interfaces.

1. Color Contrast and Readability:
2. Ensure all text meets the 4.5:1 color contrast ratio against its background.
3. Never use color as the only means to convey information (e.g., indicating a required form field with only red text).
4. Responsive Design for Various Devices:
5. Content must reflow without loss of information or functionality when zoomed up to 200%.
6. Accessible to people using all devices is a core function of quality web builders.
7. Keyboard Navigation:
8. The entire site must be navigable using only the Tab key, Enter, and Spacebar. This allows screen reader users to navigate the web.
9. A visible focus indicator (e.g., a border around the element) must show the user exactly where they are on the page.

Content Accessibility

Clear and high-quality content is naturally more accessible web content.

1. Alternative Text for Images:
2. Every meaningful image must have descriptive alt text that conveys the purpose or information of the image to a screen reader user. Example: <img src="dog.jpg" alt="Golden retriever sitting patiently on a park bench.">
3. Images that are purely decorative should have a null alt text attribute (alt="").
4. Transcripts for Audio and Video Content:
5. Provide synchronized captions for all video content.
6. Offer a full text transcript for all audio-only content (like podcasts).
7. Clear and Simple Language:
8. Use common words, short sentences, and structured paragraphs.
9. Define acronyms or unusual jargon. This helps users with disabilities with cognitive impairments navigate web content.

Technical Enhancements

Web developers hold the key to the most robust accessibility solutions.

1. Using ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications):
2. ARIA roles, states, and properties help assistive technologies understand dynamic, complex, and custom user interface components (e.g., carousels, tabs, accordions) that cannot be described by native HTML.
3. Rule of Thumb: If a native HTML element provides the semantics needed, use it instead of ARIA.
4. Semantic HTML for Better Structure:
5. Use native HTML elements correctly for their intended purpose: <header>, <nav>, <main>, <button>, <h1>, <ul>, etc.
6. This built-in semantic meaning is the primary way a screen reader understands the structure of a web page.
7. Accessible Form Elements:
8. Ensure every input field has a clearly associated <label> element.
9. Use proper validation and provide clear, accessible to people error messages that are perceivable by a screen reader.

Ongoing Maintenance and Updates

Accessibility is not a one-time project; it is an ongoing process of quality assurance. You must maintain accessibility.

• Regular Accessibility Checks: Integrate quick accessibility checks into your standard deployment process. Tools like automated scanners can catch regressions introduced by new code releases.
• Staying Updated with Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG is periodically updated (currently on 2.1, with 2.2 finalized, and 3.0 in development). Assign a team member to monitor these changes to maintain accessibility.
• Training Staff on Accessibility Best Practices: Ensure all teams—designers, content writers, developers, and QA—understand their role in creating and maintaining accessibility for websites and web pages. This shifts responsibility from a single audit to a company-wide commitment to accessibility for people with disabilities.

FAQs

What is website accessibility?

Website accessibility ensures people with diverse disabilities (visual, auditory, physical, cognitive) can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web, using a screen reader or other assistive technologies.

Why is accessibility important?

It is crucial because it expands your market reach, reduces legal risk (especially with Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 508), and significantly improves the overall user experience and SEO for every visitor.

How can I test my website's accessibility?

Start with automated accessibility testing tools (like Lighthouse or WAVE) for an initial scan, and then follow up with essential manual testing—especially keyboard-only navigation—and user testing with individuals with disabilities who rely on assistive technologies.

What are common accessibility mistakes to avoid?

Common mistakes include missing or vague alt text on images, poor color contrast, custom components that lack ARIA roles, and functionality that make it difficult to operate using the web without a mouse.

Conclusion

Building an accessible website is a strategic business decision that embodies genuine leadership in the digital accessibility space. 

By embracing the principles of WCAG and proactively addressing individuals with disabilities' needs, you demonstrate a devotion to accessibility that resonates with a broad and appreciative audience. 

The accessibility requirements are clear, the benefits are tangible, and the path forward involves a commitment to continuous improvement.

We encourage you to go beyond the checklist and embrace accessibility as a fundamental quality metric for your organization. 

Start by running a scan on your homepage today to identify accessibility problems, and build an actionable plan to correct them. 

When you prioritize full accessibility, you're not just complying with the law; you're future-proofing your business and communicating with a confidence that your platform is truly for everyone.