Imagine visiting a website and not being able to read any of the text because the font colour is almost the same as the background. Or imagine trying to fill in a contact form using only your keyboard — no mouse — because a hand injury makes precise clicking painful. Or imagine listening to a website read aloud by your phone because you have lost your sight.
These are everyday experiences for millions of people. In the UK alone, around one in five people live with a disability of some kind. Website accessibility is about making sure those people can use your site just as easily as anyone else.
What "Accessibility" Actually Means on a Website
Accessibility is not one single thing — it is a collection of practices that together make a site more usable for more people. The main areas are:
- Vision. Blind users often browse the web using software called a screen reader, which reads the page aloud. For this to work, images need text descriptions (called "alt text"), and the page needs to be structured in a logical order.
- Colour and contrast. People with colour blindness or low vision need enough contrast between text and background to read comfortably. Light grey text on a white background is a common failure.
- Keyboard navigation. Some people cannot use a mouse at all. Every link, button, and form on your site should be reachable and usable with just a keyboard.
- Video and audio. Users who are deaf or hard of hearing cannot access audio content unless you provide captions or a transcript.
- Plain language. Clear, simple writing benefits everyone — but especially people with dyslexia, cognitive differences, or those reading in a second language.
Why Does This Matter More in 2026?
There are three reasons accessibility has moved up the agenda in recent years.
First, the law. The UK Equality Act requires businesses not to discriminate against disabled people — and that extends to your website. While enforcement against small businesses is rare, inaccessible websites have resulted in legal complaints and reputational damage, particularly for larger companies. The EU's European Accessibility Act, which came into force in 2025, applies to businesses selling to EU customers.
Second, Google. Many accessibility improvements overlap directly with things Google rewards. Fast-loading pages, logical heading structure, descriptive link text, mobile-friendly layouts — these are all accessibility wins that also help your search ranking.
Third, your customers. Around 14.6 million people in the UK have some form of disability. An inaccessible site is a site that actively turns away paying customers.
Around 14.6 million people in the UK have some form of disability. An inaccessible site actively turns away paying customers.
The Quick Wins Any Small Business Can Make
You do not need to become an expert to make meaningful improvements. A few changes cover the most common problems:
- Add alt text to images. Every image on your site should have a short description — this is usually a field in whatever system you use to manage your site. Write it as a plain description: "Plumber fixing a kitchen tap" rather than "image1.jpg".
- Check your colour contrast. A free tool called the WebAIM Contrast Checker lets you paste in your text and background colours and tells you instantly if they pass the basic standard. Most modern web designers handle this automatically.
- Use proper headings. Your page title should be an H1, main sections should be H2, subsections H3. Do not skip levels. This structure is how screen readers navigate a page — and how Google reads it too.
- Write descriptive links. "Click here" tells a screen reader nothing. "View our pricing page" tells them exactly where they are going. Simple change, big difference.
- Make sure text is large enough. A minimum of 16px for body text is a safe standard. Tiny text is hard for everyone, not just people with visual impairments.
How Do You Know If Your Site Has Problems?
There are free tools that scan your site and flag common accessibility issues. Google's Lighthouse tool (built into Chrome's developer tools) gives an accessibility score alongside its performance and SEO scores. WAVE (wave.webaim.org) is another free option that gives a visual overlay of issues on your page.
Neither tool catches everything — true accessibility testing involves real users. But a Lighthouse accessibility score above 90 is a reasonable starting target for a small business site, and catching the automated failures gets you most of the way there.
Is Your Current Site Accessible?
If your site was built recently by a developer who pays attention to these things, it may already be in decent shape. If it was built using an older template or a drag-and-drop builder, it is worth checking — many of those tools produce code that scores poorly.
At GitFoundry, accessibility is baked into every site we build. Proper heading structure, sufficient colour contrast, descriptive alt text, and keyboard navigation are not optional extras — they are part of doing the job properly. If you are concerned about your current site, get in touch and we can take a look.