How to Make Your Website More Accessible — A Practical Guide

Making your website more accessible doesn’t have to mean a complete rebuild. Many of the most impactful accessibility improvements can be made incrementally — and several can be done without any technical knowledge at all. The key is knowing where to start.

This guide covers the most common accessibility barriers on small business websites and what you can do about them, from simple content changes to structural improvements.

Quick Wins You Can Implement Today

Add descriptive alt text to every image on your website. Alt text is the text that screen readers read aloud when they encounter an image — it’s also what appears if an image fails to load. Good alt text describes the content of the image: “Smith & Co Solicitors reception desk with leather seating” is useful; “image1.jpg” or “photo” is not. Decorative images that add no information should have empty alt text (alt="") so screen readers skip them.

Check your colour contrast. Text needs to be sufficiently darker or lighter than its background to be legible for users with low vision or colour blindness. The WCAG 2.1 AA standard requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal-sized text and 3:1 for large text. Free tools like the WebAIM Contrast Checker let you test any combination of colours in seconds.

Write descriptive link text. “Click here” and “Read more” are meaningless out of context — screen reader users often navigate by jumping between links, so each link should make sense on its own. “Read our guide to planning permission in Norfolk” is far more useful than “Read more.”

Structural and Technical Improvements

Use proper heading hierarchy. Your page should have a single H1, followed by H2s for main sections, and H3s for sub-sections within those. Screen reader users rely on heading structure to navigate long pages — skipping from H1 to H4, or using headings as styling tools rather than structural markers, breaks that navigation model.

Ensure your site can be navigated by keyboard alone. Press Tab to move through interactive elements (links, buttons, form fields) and check that the focus indicator — the visible outline that shows where you are — is clearly visible at every step. Many themes and plugins suppress focus indicators for aesthetic reasons, which makes the site unusable for keyboard-only users.

Add captions or transcripts to any video content. This helps deaf and hard-of-hearing users, people watching without sound, and anyone whose connection is too slow to load video reliably. Most video hosting platforms (YouTube, Vimeo) offer automatic captions — review them for accuracy before publishing.

Testing Your Website’s Accessibility

Start with automated tools. Free browser extensions like axe DevTools or WAVE scan your pages and flag common accessibility issues — missing alt text, poor contrast, missing form labels, and more. Automated tools catch around 30–40% of WCAG issues; they’re a useful starting point but not a complete audit.

The most revealing test is manual keyboard navigation: put your mouse to one side and try to complete a typical user journey — find a service, read about it, and get in touch — using only your keyboard. Any point where you get stuck or lose track of where you are on the page is an accessibility barrier.

For a professional assessment, consider commissioning an accessibility audit from a specialist or a web design agency with accessibility expertise. At Xpose, based in Norwich, we include basic accessibility checks as part of every website project and can carry out more comprehensive audits for businesses with specific compliance requirements.