What is an ac­cess­ible website and why does it matter?

Ac­cess­ible websites ensure that users with a wide range of dis­ab­il­it­ies and needs can use websites without lim­it­a­tions and without as­sist­ance from others. The purpose of an ac­cess­ible website is therefore to prevent the exclusion of certain groups online—for example, people with physical or in­tel­lec­tu­al dis­ab­il­it­ies.

What is an ac­cess­ible website?

In order to make an ac­cess­ible website, this involves designing web content in a way that allows all users to access and un­der­stand it. This includes people who rely on assistive tech­no­lo­gies such as screen readers, keyboard nav­ig­a­tion, mag­ni­fic­a­tion tools, or cap­tion­ing. As part of creating an inclusive online ex­per­i­ence, ac­cess­ible websites are essential for busi­nesses, or­gan­isa­tions, and public in­sti­tu­tions. Ac­cess­ible web design can also improve search engine op­tim­isa­tion by enhancing usability and in­form­a­tion structure.

Barriers are obstacles that make it difficult — or in some cases im­possible — for users to access and interact with website content. While awareness of ac­cess­ib­il­ity in physical spaces has grown sig­ni­fic­antly, barriers on the web still arise fre­quently and often un­in­ten­tion­ally. These can be caused by technical decisions, visual design choices, or poorly struc­tured content. Research and practical examples show that in­ter­act­ive com­pon­ents, such as logins or security features, can present major chal­lenges. Certain CAPTCHAs using distorted char­ac­ters or visual-only puzzles can sig­ni­fic­antly limit access for people with visual impair­ments and conflict with current ex­pect­a­tions for ac­cess­ible websites.

Web ac­cess­ib­il­ity standards for ac­cess­ible websites

The key in­ter­na­tion­al standard for ac­cess­ible websites is the WCAG—spe­cific­ally WCAG 2.2 (Web Content Ac­cess­ib­il­ity Guidelines). These W3C guidelines define the latest re­quire­ments and best practices that make websites ac­cess­ible to all users.

WCAG 2.2 em­phas­ises improved usability, clearer keyboard and focus nav­ig­a­tion, and sim­pli­fied in­ter­ac­tions on mobile devices. These updates reflect evolving user behaviour and address barriers that earlier versions did not fully cover.

Some of the most important WCAG 2.2 success criteria include:

• Visible keyboard focus: In­ter­act­ive elements must be clearly visible when navigated using a keyboard.
• Minimum size of controls: Clickable and touchable areas must be large enough to avoid ac­ci­dent­al ac­tiv­a­tion.
• Al­tern­at­ives to drag movements: In­ter­ac­tions must not rely ex­clus­ively on drag-and-drop.
• Avoiding redundant input: Users should not need to re-enter the same in­form­a­tion multiple times.
• Ac­cess­ible au­then­tic­a­tion: Login processes must not depend on cognitive tasks such as puzzle-based CAPTCHAs.

WCAG 2.2 is the main benchmark for modern website de­vel­op­ment and forms the technical found­a­tion for ac­cess­ib­il­ity re­quire­ments in the United Kingdom.

Per­ceiv­able

Many websites include flashing ads, comment sections are filled with small-font text, and sometimes back­ground music even plays to reinforce the page’s mood or theme. Depending on the type and severity of a dis­ab­il­ity, some visitors to your website may not perceive these elements fully—or at all.

Blind people, for example, navigate the internet without visual cues. Instead, a screen reader reads the website aloud. The device passes the readable data to the assistive tech­no­lo­gies being used. A re­freshable Braille display, for instance, can convert text into Braille. This allows the person to perceive your website through touch. A text-to-speech tool plays the content in audio format. With this tech­no­logy, users rely on hearing to process website content. In the example just mentioned, however, the back­ground music then becomes a dis­trac­tion.

People with a less severe visual impair­ment—including many older adults—can take in your website’s content with their eyes, but they rely on a highly magnified display. People with colour vision de­fi­ciency, on the other hand, may not notice warnings that are conveyed only through colour. Deaf people, in turn, cannot access the in­form­a­tion in audio-only files and much of the content in video files.

Un­der­stand­able

Very young users, older adults, or people with cognitive dis­ab­il­it­ies may struggle to un­der­stand texts filled with technical language, un­ex­plained ab­bre­vi­ations, or complex sentences. If a website separates related content or uses in­con­sist­ent ter­min­o­logy, users may find it difficult to grasp the intended meaning.

Operable

As mobile browsing continues to grow, it becomes es­pe­cially frus­trat­ing when links are too small or too close together to tap ac­cur­ately. Websites that aren’t optimised for smart­phones—where tightly packed, tiny link text is common—can be par­tic­u­larly difficult for older adults or anyone with limited hand stead­i­ness.

However, many tools have now been developed for people with physical dis­ab­il­it­ies that make it easier to use computers. For this purpose, some tools track eye movements, while other tech­no­lo­gies are operated via the keyboard. In principle, a website designed for web ac­cess­ib­il­ity should be built so it can be in­ter­preted by such assistive tech­no­lo­gies. If your website can’t be navigated with them, potential customers who rely on them have no chance to use your full range of offerings.

When users are asked to fill out a form—for example, to sign up for a news­let­ter—errors are not uncommon. The password is too short, or the date of birth doesn’t fit the specified para­met­ers. Therefore, provide clear guidance on how to fix errors. In­ter­act­ing with a website also includes nav­ig­a­tion. People who use devices with small displays or work with high screen mag­ni­fic­a­tion need nav­ig­a­tion paths tailored to that and rely on a clear, well-struc­tured website.

Comment sections allow users to provide feedback. They can use them to share their opinion about a product or content, or to com­mu­nic­ate with other people. When typing on a monitor, people with visual impair­ments often use a screen magnifier. This makes elements appear much larger and increases the distance between the reading column and the input field. Therefore, place the elements visually close together to make it easier for users to engage with each other.

Robust

Websites must be com­pat­ible with assistive tech­no­lo­gies through proper code structure. Semantic HTML (like <main>, <nav>, <section>) helps screen readers un­der­stand page or­gan­isa­tion. Proper form labels connect input fields to their de­scrip­tions using for at­trib­utes. ARIA landmarks provide shortcuts for screen reader nav­ig­a­tion. Without these, even well-designed content becomes unusable for assistive tech­no­logy users.

What are the benefits of ac­cess­ible web design?

Removing ac­cess­ib­il­ity barriers improves the usability of your website and strengthens your vis­ib­il­ity in search engines. Many ac­cess­ib­il­ity practices overlap with best practices in user ex­per­i­ence and SEO, meaning that im­prove­ments made for ac­cess­ib­il­ity often benefit all visitors.

An ac­cess­ible website helps:

• users on mobile devices,
• people with physical or cognitive dis­ab­il­it­ies,
• older adults, and
• visitors who may be un­fa­mil­i­ar with web nav­ig­a­tion.

By present­ing in­form­a­tion clearly and struc­tur­ing your website logically, you increase both read­ab­il­ity and the amount of time users spend on your pages. While ac­cess­ib­il­ity does require ad­di­tion­al work and testing, the benefits are extensive. Ac­cess­ible websites provide a better ex­per­i­ence for everyone.

How to make a website ac­cess­ible? Tips and examples

If you want to build an ac­cess­ible website, you should pay close attention to how you structure in­form­a­tion as well as various visual com­pon­ents of the site.

Step 1: Ensure a clear in­form­a­tion structure

Give your website a logical, easy-to-follow structure and use straight­for­ward, user-friendly language. This makes your content more ac­cess­ible and also improves your Google ranking, since search engines evaluate read­ab­il­ity and clarity.

To support strong SEO and maintain an organised site ar­chi­tec­ture, keep the following in mind:

Step 2: Use visual cues

Scalable fonts and colour ad­just­ments help people with low vision or colour blindness read website content more easily. Ensure that text has suf­fi­cient contrast from the back­ground and that in­ter­act­ive elements such as buttons or links stand out clearly.

To help users who navigate with a keyboard or screen reader, highlight in­ter­act­ive elements through:

• visible focus in­dic­at­ors,
• hover effects,
• active link styles.

Do not rely solely on colour to convey meaning — sup­ple­ment colour coding with symbols, numbers, or asterisks.

Close

People who ex­per­i­ence epileptic seizures are at risk if a website contains graphics or videos that flash more than three times per second. Re­search­ers have also found that sharply defined, high-contrast grid patterns can trigger seizures in people with pho­to­sensit­ive epilepsy as well.

Step 3: Present in­form­a­tion in multiple formats

Website ac­cess­ib­il­ity should be part of your daily workflow. Whether you’re op­tim­ising for search engines, pub­lish­ing PR content, or adding new product pages, regularly uploaded content should be struc­tured in a way that is usable for all visitors.

A fun­da­ment­al part of website ac­cess­ib­il­ity — with SEO benefits — is including alt text for images. Because crawlers and screen readers cannot interpret images, alt text provides mean­ing­ful de­scrip­tions for:

• blind users,
• people with low vision,
• users on slow internet con­nec­tions.

Tran­scripts and captions

Creating tran­scripts and captions on a con­tinu­ous and timely basis is a more extensive task. These tools allow you to make audio content ac­cess­ible to people who are Deaf or hard of hearing. A tran­script, which converts spoken words as well as sounds and back­ground noises into text, should be placed as close as possible to the as­so­ci­ated audio content — for example, via a button that links directly to the document.

Captions make it sig­ni­fic­antly easier for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing to un­der­stand web videos. They also benefit users who prefer not to play audio (for instance, because they don’t want to disturb others). People with cognitive dis­ab­il­it­ies or con­di­tions such as ADHD often process video content more ef­fect­ively when they can mute back­ground sounds using a video player setting — similar to users with hearing impair­ments.

Audio de­scrip­tion

People with visual acuity below 30 percent are con­sidered visually impaired, and those with visual acuity below two percent are con­sidered blind. They perceive visual in­form­a­tion only partially or not at all. To ensure that these in­di­vidu­als can un­der­stand your video content, you should include an ad­di­tion­al audio track. This track provides ex­plan­a­tions of visual elements such as land­scapes, people, and short de­scrip­tions of actions taking place on screen. Place these ex­plan­a­tions in the speech and audio pauses of the original recording so that the audio tracks do not overlap.

Easy-to-read language

Easy language expresses content in a very simple way. It helps people with cognitive dis­ab­il­it­ies un­der­stand complex in­form­a­tion more easily. Easy language avoids elements such as the sub­junct­ive, synonyms, and negations. Sentences are short and contain only one idea at a time. People with cognitive dis­ab­il­it­ies have the same right to in­form­a­tion as everyone else. For this reason, daily news­pa­pers in­creas­ingly provide versions of their articles in easy language on their online platforms as a good example of ac­cess­ible websites. Public in­sti­tu­tions are also using easy language more fre­quently in their in­form­a­tion­al texts.

A less strict form is what’s known as easy-to-read language, which roughly cor­res­ponds to language level A2 or B1.

Step 4: Make the website com­pat­ible

Assistive tech­no­lo­gies such as screen readers make web ac­cess­ib­il­ity possible for many users. These tools process websites linearly from left to right and top to bottom, which is why layout and content must be separated cleanly. Otherwise, page elements may be in­ter­preted in­cor­rectly.

To help users navigate ef­fi­ciently, follow these core rules.

Skip nav­ig­a­tion links and other shortcuts

Screen readers pass text in­form­a­tion to text-to-speech software and re­freshable braille displays. To do this, they read the page from top to bottom—this also includes repeating elements such as the nav­ig­a­tion bar, icons, or links to subpages. To prevent the reader from un­ne­ces­sar­ily repeating this in­form­a­tion on every page, you should implement skip nav­ig­a­tion links (short: skip links).

Users who navigate using only a keyboard, possibly with a mouth stick, also struggle a lot if they have to tab through numerous elements. These people benefit from a skip link at the top of the page that is as visible as possible:

<a href="#content">Skip navigation</a>
<main id="content">
    <h1>Main heading</h1>
    <p>First paragraph</p>
</main>

There are skip links that are invisible in the layout, but the screen reader relays the al­tern­at­ive text message ‘Skip nav­ig­a­tion’ to the user when the code looks like this:

<a href="#content"><img src="empty.gif" height="15" border="0" alt="Skip navigation" width="5"></a>

It’s important that skip links appear as early as possible in the code. Place the anchor target at the beginning of the main content:

<div id="content"></div>

Use skip links sparingly, as too many of them can cancel out their positive effect and force users to click through an excessive number of elements. A more elegant solution is to use ARIA landmarks and ensure a well-struc­tured document. It is also advisable to use HTML5 elements.

Another helpful feature is a table of contents at the beginning of the document, which allows users to jump to specific sections via in-page links. Modern screen readers read the cor­res­pond­ing headings aloud. By using mean­ing­ful, well-struc­tured headings, you improve read­ab­il­ity for both search engines and assistive tech­no­lo­gies.

Data tables instead of layout tables

For web ac­cess­ib­il­ity under W3C web ac­cess­ib­il­ity guidelines, ideally use only data tables. Screen readers have fewer issues with this format and can present the in­form­a­tion mean­ing­fully after con­ver­sion. Layout tables, on the other hand, give a page visual structure but make it harder for screen readers to convey the content clearly.

Define layout tables using only simple elements: TABLE, TR, and TD (table, row, and cell, re­spect­ively). Use struc­tur­al elements to make the re­la­tion­ships between cells logical; then the screen reader will read the layout table like a data table. You do the opposite if you remove certain table elements from the ac­cess­ib­il­ity tree.

For your web ac­cess­ib­il­ity efforts, use the code role="none" as shown in the example. This applies to the table and its child elements. If you nest tables within tables, you must define both elements with it.

<table role="none">
<tr>
<td>
<table role="none">
<tr>
<td>
Example text <abbr title="for example">e.g.</abbr> about ARIA
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Checklist for ac­cess­ible websites

Once you’ve finished building your website, reviewing our web ac­cess­ib­il­ity checklist can help you make sure you’ve con­sidered the key factors.

✓ In­form­a­tion structure is well organised and easy to follow

✓ Use of clear, ac­cess­ible language

✓ Alt text for images

✓ Video and audio tran­scripts

✓ Colour high­light­ing for important content

✓ High contrast

✓ Screen reader support

Free tools for creating ac­cess­ible websites

There are a number of tools that can help you build an ac­cess­ible website. Below are some of the most well-known options:

• TPGi ARC Toolkit: Highly credible and ideal for technical website audits.
• Ac­cess­ib­il­ity Checker: This web app allows you to test your site for WCAG com­pli­ance free of charge.
• Siteim­prove: Siteim­prove’s Ac­cess­ib­il­ity Checker offers a free website scan, with the results delivered by email.

Website ac­cess­ib­il­ity improves the UX for everyone

Improving ac­cess­ib­il­ity on your website enhances overall usability and sig­ni­fic­antly improves the user ex­per­i­ence. This benefits:

• mobile users,
• people with physical or cognitive dis­ab­il­it­ies,
• older adults, and
• anyone who may be less com­fort­able nav­ig­at­ing the web.

By struc­tur­ing your website clearly and preparing content in an inclusive, easy-to-un­der­stand format, you support both ac­cess­ib­il­ity and search engine op­tim­isa­tion. Clear ar­chi­tec­ture, strong contrast, readable text, and assistive-tech­no­logy com­pat­ib­il­ity all con­trib­ute to longer visit durations and higher sat­is­fac­tion rates.

While ensuring ac­cess­ib­il­ity requires ad­di­tion­al work—such as thorough testing, clear content structure, al­tern­at­ive text, and thought­fully designed in­ter­ac­tion elements—the in­vest­ment is well worth it. Ac­cess­ible website design benefits all users, strengthens brand cred­ib­il­ity, and helps you reach a wider audience, including those who rely on assistive tech­no­lo­gies to navigate the web.