Around a quarter of people in the UK have a disability. Some are blind or partially sighted and use screen readers. Some can’t use a mouse and navigate with a keyboard alone. Others have dyslexia, colour blindness or a temporary injury like a broken wrist. If your website doesn’t work for them, they’ll simply go elsewhere – and most won’t tell you why.
Website accessibility is about making sure everyone can use your website, whatever their abilities or the way they browse. It’s often treated as something only big organisations need to worry about, but it matters just as much for small businesses. Here’s what the law says, the most common problems we come across and some straightforward ways to improve things.
What does the law say?
There’s no single UK law that sets out exactly what a business website must do, but several rules are relevant:
- The Equality Act 2010 requires businesses providing services to the public to make reasonable adjustments so disabled people aren’t put at a disadvantage. That’s widely understood to include websites, even though the Act doesn’t mention them by name.
- The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 set specific requirements for public sector websites, including publishing an accessibility statement. If you work with councils, schools, the NHS or other public bodies, they may expect the same standard from their suppliers.
- The European Accessibility Act has applied since June 2025 to businesses selling certain products and services to consumers in the EU, including online shops – and that includes UK businesses selling into the EU. Very small service businesses, with fewer than 10 staff and an annual turnover under €2 million, are exempt.
In practice, the benchmark everyone uses is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It’s an international standard that breaks accessibility down into specific, testable checks. The current version is WCAG 2.2, and level AA is the level most organisations aim for.
Common accessibility problems (and how to fix them)
The good news is that many of the most common issues are quick to put right.
Missing alt text on images
Screen readers rely on alternative text to describe images to people who can’t see them. Without it, a visitor might just hear “image” or a meaningless file name. Every meaningful image should have a short description of what it shows. Purely decorative images should have empty alt text, so screen readers skip them. Our free alt text checker will list any images on a page that a screen reader can’t describe.
Poor colour contrast
Light grey text on a white background might look stylish, but it can be very hard to read – especially for anyone with a visual impairment, or on a phone in bright sunlight. Make sure there’s enough contrast between your text and its background. There are free contrast checkers online that make this easy to test.
Links and buttons that don’t make sense
Screen reader users often skip from link to link, so a page full of “Click here” and “Read more” links doesn’t tell them much. Use link text that makes sense on its own, such as “Read our website maintenance guide”.
Websites that don’t work with a keyboard
Some people can’t use a mouse. Try pressing the Tab key to move through your website. Can you reach every link, menu and button? Can you see where you are on the page? Pop-up menus and cookie banners are frequent culprits here.
Forms without proper labels
Form fields need labels that stay visible and are properly linked to the field, rather than placeholder text that disappears as soon as someone starts typing. Error messages should also explain clearly what’s gone wrong and how to fix it.
Headings used for style, not structure
Headings help everyone scan a page, and screen reader users rely on them to jump between sections. Use them in a logical order – one main heading, then sub-headings beneath it – rather than picking a heading because you like the size of the text.
Inaccessible PDFs and videos
PDFs are often forgotten, but menus, price lists and reports uploaded as scanned images can’t be read by screen readers at all. Videos should have captions, which also help the many people who watch with the sound off.
It’s not just about compliance
Accessibility is often framed as a legal box to tick, but the benefits go much further than that.
An accessible website is simply easier for everyone to use. Clear headings, readable text, sensible links and forms that explain themselves help every visitor, not just disabled people. That tends to mean more enquiries and fewer people giving up halfway through.
There’s an SEO benefit too. Search engines read your website in a similar way to a screen reader, so things like alt text, descriptive links and a clear heading structure help them understand your content. Accessibility also goes hand in hand with performance – our article on the business impact of Core Web Vitals explains why user experience now matters so much for search rankings.
And it’s good for your reputation. People notice when a business has made the effort to include them – and they notice when it hasn’t.
Making your website work for everyone
Accessibility doesn’t have to be perfect overnight. Fixing the basics – alt text, contrast, clear links, keyboard access and well-labelled forms – will make a real difference to many of your visitors, and you can build from there.
At 37 Digital, accessibility is built into every website we design and develop, and we test against WCAG guidelines before anything goes live. We can also audit an existing website, give you a clear list of what needs fixing and help you work through it – including PDFs and other documents. You can find out more about our web design and development work, or see how our website maintenance plans can help keep things on track as your website changes.
If you’d like to know how accessible your website is, get in touch and we’ll take a look.
Updated 23 October 2026: we’ve added a link to our free alt text checker, which launched after this article was first published.
