Web accessibility means people with disabilities — vision, hearing, motor, cognitive — can use your website. About one in four adults has a disability, so it's a real chunk of your potential customers. It's also, increasingly, a legal exposure that small businesses get caught by.
The Legal Position, Briefly
The ADA applies to your website
US courts have consistently treated commercial websites as "places of public accommodation" under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act — which applies regardless of your company's size or revenue. (Other countries have parallel laws; the UK's Equality Act, the EU's Accessibility Act.)
The standard is WCAG 2.1 / 2.2 Level AA
There's no ADA "checklist" in the regulation, so courts and plaintiffs' attorneys have settled on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Level AA, as the practical benchmark. Aim for 2.2 AA; treat 2.1 AA as the floor.
The Fixes That Cover Most of It
The machine-detectable failures are the ones that get sites flagged. Handle these and you've addressed the bulk of the exposure:
1. Colour contrast
Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background (3:1 for large text). Light grey on white fails. Check with WebAIM's Contrast Checker.
2. Alt text on images
Every meaningful image needs a short text description. Decorative images get empty alt text (alt="") so screen readers skip them.
3. Labelled form fields
Every input in your contact form needs a proper label a screen reader can announce — not just placeholder text that vanishes when you type.
4. Meaningful link and button text
"Read more" and "Click here" out of context are useless to a screen reader. Links should describe where they go: "Read our website checklist".
5. Keyboard navigation
Every function — menus, forms, buttons, sliders — must work with the Tab and Enter keys alone, with a visible focus outline showing where you are. Try it on your own site.
6. Proper heading structure
One H1 per page, then H2s and H3s in logical order. Screen-reader users navigate by headings; a page with no structure is a wall of text to them.
7. Text that resizes and reflows
A visitor must be able to zoom to 200% without content being cut off or overlapping. This is mostly a consequence of building the site responsively in the first place.
8. Captions on video
Any video with speech needs captions. Auto-captions from YouTube are a starting point but should be checked for accuracy.
How to Check Your Site
- Automated scan: run your key pages through WAVE (wave.webaim.org) or Google Lighthouse's accessibility audit. This catches the machine-detectable failures — usually 30–40% of issues.
- Manual checks: tab through the page with your keyboard, zoom to 200%, turn on your device's screen reader for five minutes on the homepage.
- For a real audit: a specialist review by someone who tests with assistive technology is the only way to get true confidence — worth it if you're higher-risk (retail, healthcare, anything transactional).
Accessibility Is Also Just Better Design
Good contrast, clear headings, real labels, keyboard support, resizable text — none of this makes your site look worse. It makes it easier for everyone: in bright sun, on a small screen, in a hurry. It also helps SEO, because the same structure search engines read is the structure screen readers read.
Built Accessible from the Start
Every website we build at LocalPageHQ targets WCAG 2.2 AA as standard — sufficient contrast, alt text, labelled forms, keyboard navigation, and a clean heading structure baked in, not bolted on with a widget.
We'll build a free preview of your site using your real business details, so you can run it through WAVE yourself.
Request your free mockup here →
