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Is your website usable by everyone? Accessibility – or a11y, shorthand for the 11 letters between the "a" and "y" in "accessibility" – is still too often treated as an afterthought. But small, targeted changes can make a dramatic difference for users with visual, motor, cognitive or auditory impairments.
Here are five practical steps you can take today.
1. Check your colour contrast
Low contrast between text and background is one of the most common accessibility failures – and one of the easiest to fix. WCAG 2.1 requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
Run your colour palette through a free tool like WebAIM's Contrast Checker and update any failing pairs.
Don't forget that placeholder text, captions and text on images are also text, so they need proper colour contrast as well.
Who does this help? Primarily users with low vision or colour blindness – but also anyone reading on a phone in bright sunlight or on a low-quality screen. Poor contrast affects more people than you'd expect, and it's one of the least time-consuming issues to address.
2. Add meaningful alt text to images
Every image on your site should have an alt attribute, so people who are blind or have low vision are still able to understand its meaning.
Generic entries like "image" or leaving alt empty (except for decorative images) don't help anyone. Descriptive alt text tells screen reader users what the image actually conveys – whether it's a graph, a product photo or an infographic.
As a rule: if the image communicates something, so should the alt text.
Who does this help? Blind users and those with low vision who rely on screen readers to describe page content. But alt text also helps users on slow connections where images fail to load, and it improves how search engines index your content, so it's a win on multiple fronts.
3. Make sure your site is keyboard-navigable
A significant portion of users, including those who can't use a mouse, rely entirely on keyboard navigation. Open your site and press Tab. Can you reach every link, button and form field? Is it clear where focus currently is? If focus indicators are invisible or elements are unreachable, users relying on keyboards or switch devices are effectively locked out.
Who does this help? People with motor impairments who can't operate a mouse, users navigating with switch devices or eye-tracking software, and power users who simply prefer the keyboard. It's one of the broadest accessibility fixes you can make, as the group it affects is much larger than most people assume.
4. Use semantic HTML
Headings, landmarks, lists and buttons aren't just for visual structure; they're essential to how assistive technologies understand a page.
Using <h1> through <h6> in logical order, <nav>, <main>, <footer> for landmarks, and <button> for interactive elements (instead of clickable <div>s) gives screen readers a meaningful page map to work with. Semantic markup is also better for SEO as a bonus.
Who does this help? Screen reader users primarily, but also people using voice control software like Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which relies on recognisable element types to let users say things like "click button" or "go to navigation." Semantic structure is the foundation that almost every assistive technology builds on.
5. Test with a screen reader
Nothing replaces actually experiencing your site the way a user with a visual impairment does. Try navigating a key page using VoiceOver (built into macOS/iOS) or NVDA (free for Windows) with your eyes closed. You'll quickly discover which headings are missing, which links are ambiguously labelled ("click here"), and where the experience breaks down entirely.
Who does this help? This one is less about a specific group and more about building empathy for all of them. Running this test yourself, even just once, gives you a visceral understanding of what blind and low-vision users experience daily. That perspective tends to stick with developers in a way that guidelines alone never quite do.
These five steps are a starting point, not a finish line
Running through these checks will surface the most glaring issues, but a truly accessible website requires a thorough audit across WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria: forms, dynamic content, PDFs, video captions, error handling and more.
At Agiledrop, accessibility isn't a new topic for us. Several of our developers have pursued dedicated online courses and certifications in web accessibility, building deep, structured knowledge of what accessible development actually demands. On top of that, we recently put that knowledge to a practical test through an internal accessibility hackathon, where our team navigated and fixed real-world accessibility barriers firsthand.
If you'd like a professional accessibility audit of your website, or help remediating what's found, get in touch with us. We'll help you make your site work for everyone.
