Website accessibility is the practice of designing and building websites so that people with disabilities, including visual, hearing, motor and cognitive impairments, can perceive, navigate and use them. For most businesses, the practical standard to follow is WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines), aiming for level AA. Many of the fixes are simple, they make the site easier for every visitor, and they cost far less when planned into a build than when added later.
Accessibility can sound like a specialist or legal subject, but most of it comes down to good, careful design and development. This guide explains what WCAG asks for in plain language, where business websites usually fall short and how to make progress without a huge project.
Who benefits from website accessibility?
Everyone, but most directly the many people who use the web with a disability or a temporary limitation. Accessible design also helps older visitors, people on small screens and anyone using a site in bright sunlight or a noisy place.
Think about the people who might visit a business website on a normal day:
- A buyer with low vision who zooms the page to 200 percent or uses a screen reader.
- A procurement manager who cannot use a mouse after an injury and navigates with the keyboard.
- A retired customer who finds small, light-grey text hard to read.
- Someone with colour blindness trying to tell which form fields are marked in red.
- A visitor watching your product video in a busy office with the sound off.
Disability is also not always permanent. A broken wrist, an eye infection or simply forgetting reading glasses can turn a minor design flaw into a real barrier for a day or a month. Designing for these situations makes the site more forgiving for everyone.
Each of these people may be ready to enquire or buy. If the site gets in their way, they leave, and you may never know why.
What is WCAG?
WCAG is the international set of guidelines for accessible web content, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Version 2.2 was published in 2023, and its success criteria are grouped into levels A, AA and AAA.
Level A covers the most basic requirements, AA is the level most organisations and regulations reference, and AAA is the strictest and not usually expected for whole sites. The guidelines are organised around four principles, often remembered as POUR:
| Principle | What it means | Business website examples |
|---|---|---|
| Perceivable | Information can be seen, heard or otherwise sensed | Alt text on images, captions on videos, enough colour contrast |
| Operable | Everything can be used, including by keyboard | Menus and forms that work without a mouse, visible focus, no time traps |
| Understandable | Content and interactions are clear and predictable | Plain language, clear form labels, helpful error messages |
| Robust | Works with browsers and assistive technologies | Valid, semantic HTML; correctly coded buttons and controls |
What are the most common accessibility problems on business websites?
The same handful of issues appear again and again: low contrast, missing alt text, unlabelled forms, keyboard problems and vague links. Fixing these covers a large part of the work for a typical site.
Low colour contrast
Light-grey text on white, or white text on a pale brand colour, is hard to read. WCAG AA asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. If your brand palette fails these ratios, adjust shades for text use. Our article on choosing brand colours discusses this balance.
Images without useful alternative text
Screen readers read alt text aloud. Product photos, diagrams and images that carry information need short, accurate descriptions; purely decorative images should have empty alt text so they are skipped. See our website image optimisation guide for writing alt text well.
Forms that are hard to complete
Every field needs a visible label, not just placeholder text that disappears when typing starts. Errors should be explained in words, not only shown in red. Our contact form best practices cover this in more detail.
Keyboard traps and invisible focus
Menus, sliders, pop-ups and cookie banners often cannot be operated with the Tab and Enter keys, or the focus outline has been removed for visual reasons. Keyboard users then lose track of where they are.
Vague links and messy headings
Links that say only “click here” or “read more” make little sense when a screen reader lists them. Headings used for styling rather than structure, or levels that jump from H2 to H4, make pages hard to navigate.
Video, audio and moving content
Product videos and walkthroughs need captions, and important audio-only content needs a transcript. Auto-playing sliders and animations should be avoidable: give visitors a way to pause anything that moves for more than a few seconds, and avoid flashing effects. Carousels are a frequent problem, because their controls are often small, unlabelled and impossible to reach by keyboard.
Small tap targets and text in images
Tiny icons and links packed closely together are hard to tap for anyone with limited dexterity, and WCAG 2.2 added a minimum target size criterion at level AA. Text placed inside images, such as offers baked into a banner, cannot be resized or read by screen readers, so keep important words in real text.
How can you check your own website?
Start with a few manual checks that take minutes, then use automated tools to catch more. Automated tools find only part of the issues, so a human review of key pages is still needed.
- Keyboard test: put the mouse aside and press Tab through your home page, a service page and the contact form. Can you reach and use everything, and can you always see where you are?
- Zoom test: zoom the browser to 200 percent. Does text remain readable without overlapping or disappearing?
- Contrast check: run your main text and button colours through a contrast checker.
- Image check: review the alt text on key images in your CMS.
- Automated scan: run a browser-based accessibility checker, such as the one built into Lighthouse, on your main templates.
- Screen reader sample: try your contact page with a free screen reader such as NVDA on Windows or VoiceOver on Apple devices.
Where should you start fixing?
Prioritise the pages and journeys that matter most to your business: the home page, main service or product pages, and the path to an enquiry or purchase. Fix shared templates first, because one change then improves every page that uses them.
- Correct contrast and focus styles in the theme’s CSS.
- Make the main menu, forms and any pop-ups keyboard-friendly.
- Add alt text and captions to existing content, and make it part of your publishing routine.
- Use proper heading levels and descriptive link text in new content.
- Choose themes and plugins with accessibility in mind; our guide to choosing a WordPress theme includes this.
Do not forget the people who publish content. A well-built theme can still produce inaccessible pages if editors paste text as images, skip alt text or choose headings by size. A short checklist for content editors, covering alt text, headings, link wording and captions, keeps new pages accessible after launch. Documents matter too: price lists and brochures uploaded as scanned PDFs cannot be read by screen readers, so provide key information as web pages or properly tagged files.
If you are planning a website redesign, build accessibility into the brief from day one. It is far cheaper than retrofitting, and it pairs naturally with mobile-first design, since both reward clear layouts and readable text.
What about legal requirements?
In India, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 sets accessibility obligations, and government websites are expected to follow the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites, which draw on WCAG. If you sell into other markets, such as Europe, their accessibility rules may also apply to some products and services. How these apply to a particular private business depends on its sector and circumstances, so take proper legal advice rather than relying on a blog post. Treat WCAG AA as a sensible technical target either way.
Building an accessible website with us
Website accessibility is not a one-time badge; it is a habit of building and publishing carefully. Start with the common issues, fix templates before individual pages and train whoever updates your content.
At DA WebTech in Ahmedabad, we design and build sites with semantic HTML, readable contrast and keyboard-friendly navigation as standard, and we can review an existing site’s key templates. If you would like a practical accessibility review, request a quote and tell us which pages matter most.
