Not everybody uses your website the way you do
You may look at your website on a laptop, use a mouse, read the text easily and watch a video with the sound turned on.
Someone else may use a screen reader.
Navigate with a keyboard.
Need larger text.
Have difficulty distinguishing certain colours.
Use captions rather than audio.
Have a temporary injury that makes using a mouse difficult.
Or simply be trying to read your website outside on a phone with the sun shining directly onto the screen.
Accessibility is about recognising that there isn’t one “normal” website visitor.
Start with readable text
Tiny text may look beautifully minimal in a design.
It’s not particularly beautiful if people can’t comfortably read it.
Use clear fonts, sensible text sizes and enough space between lines and paragraphs.
Break large walls of text into headings and shorter sections.
That helps people with different visual or cognitive needs — and frankly, it helps everybody else too.
Don’t rely on colour alone
Colour can help communicate information, but it shouldn’t be the only clue.
For example, if an error message is indicated only by turning a field red, someone who can’t distinguish that colour may not know what went wrong.
Use text, labels or other visual cues as well.
Also check that there is enough contrast between text and its background.
Pale grey writing on a white background may look elegant on your monitor.
Your visitor may simply see… nothing much at all.
Give useful images useful alternative text
Alternative text — often called alt text — can describe the purpose or content of an image for people who cannot see it.
But not every image needs an essay.
If an image conveys important information, describe that information appropriately.
If it is purely decorative, it may not need descriptive alt text at all.
Think about what someone would miss if they couldn’t see the image.
Use headings properly
Headings aren’t simply text that happens to be bigger and bolder.
They give a page structure.
A logical heading structure helps people scan content and can help assistive technology navigate the page.
Your main page heading should describe the page, with subheadings organising the sections beneath it.
Can you use the website without a mouse?
Try it.
Use the Tab key and move around your site.
Can you reach the menu?
Buttons?
Links?
Forms?
Can you tell which element currently has focus?
Can you complete an important action?
You may discover things you never notice while clicking around normally.
Forms matter too
If you’re asking somebody to contact you, register, book or buy, make sure the form itself doesn’t become the barrier.
Use clear field labels.
Make required information obvious.
Provide understandable error messages.
Don’t ask for information you don’t actually need.
And test the form.
Accessibility doesn’t help much if the beautifully accessible form sends its messages into a black hole. 😁
Think about video and audio
If important information is presented in a video, captions or a transcript can make that information available to people who can’t hear the audio — and to the person watching quietly while a sleeping baby is finally, miraculously, asleep.
Accessibility improvements frequently help people far beyond the group you initially had in mind.
You don’t need to fix everything today
Our original Her Place accessibility material deliberately approached this as a practical starting point rather than expecting a small business owner to become an accessibility expert overnight.
Start with your most important pages.
Your homepage.
Contact page.
Main service or product page.
Booking or checkout process.
Check:
Can I read it comfortably?
Is the contrast clear?
Are the headings logical?
Do meaningful images have useful alt text?
Can I navigate using a keyboard?
Are forms understandable?
Do important videos have captions or another way to access the information?
Every barrier you remove makes your website easier for somebody to use.
And that’s a pretty good reason to do it.
