Website accessibility means making sure people with disabilities can use your website effectively. That includes people who are blind or have low vision, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people with motor impairments, and people with cognitive disabilities.
It might sound like a niche concern, but consider this: roughly one in four American adults lives with some form of disability. That's a massive audience — and if your site shuts them out, you're losing business and potentially exposing yourself to legal action.
ADA and WCAG: The Basics
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to websites, not just physical spaces. Courts have increasingly ruled that business websites are "places of public accommodation," meaning they must be accessible to people with disabilities.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the technical standards that define what an accessible website looks like. WCAG 2.2 is the current standard, and it's organized around four principles. Your site should be:
- Perceivable — users can see or hear all content (alt text for images, captions for video, sufficient color contrast)
- Operable — users can navigate and interact using a keyboard, screen reader, or other assistive technology
- Understandable — content is clear, navigation is predictable, and errors are explained
- Robust — the site works across different browsers, devices, and assistive technologies
WCAG has three conformance levels: A (minimum), AA (recommended for most businesses), and AAA (highest). Most legal standards and best practices target Level AA.
Common Accessibility Issues
You'd be surprised how many websites — including expensive, professionally-built ones — fail basic accessibility checks. Here are the most common problems:
- Missing alt text — images without descriptive text are invisible to screen readers
- Poor color contrast — light gray text on a white background might look sleek, but it's unreadable for many users
- No keyboard navigation — if you can't tab through menus, forms, and buttons, keyboard-only users are locked out
- Missing form labels — screen readers can't tell users what a form field is for without a proper label
- Auto-playing media — videos or audio that play automatically can be disorienting and disruptive
- Inaccessible PDFs — many businesses post menus, catalogs, or documents as PDFs that screen readers can't parse
- Missing heading structure — headings (h1, h2, h3) aren't just for visual styling; they create a navigable outline for assistive technology
The Legal Risk Is Real
ADA-related website lawsuits have surged in recent years. In 2025, over 4,000 web accessibility lawsuits were filed in the United States. These aren't just targeting Fortune 500 companies — small businesses, restaurants, and local service providers have been named in suits.
The typical demand in a small business accessibility lawsuit ranges from $5,000 to $25,000 in legal fees and settlements. Compare that to the cost of building your site accessibly from the start, and the math is clear.
How to Audit Your Website
You don't need to be a developer to start evaluating your site's accessibility. Try these steps:
- Use an automated scanner — tools like WAVE, axe DevTools, or Lighthouse (built into Chrome) can catch many common issues in seconds
- Try navigating with just your keyboard — press Tab to move through the page. Can you reach every link, button, and form field? Can you see where you are?
- Turn on a screen reader — VoiceOver (Mac/iOS) and NVDA (Windows) are free. Listen to how your site sounds, not just how it looks
- Check color contrast — use a contrast checker tool to verify your text meets WCAG AA ratios (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text)
- Review your forms — are labels visible and properly associated? Do error messages clearly explain what went wrong?
Want a quick read on your site's overall health? Our free website scorecard evaluates performance, SEO, and usability factors that overlap with accessibility.
The Business Benefits of Accessible Design
Accessibility isn't just about avoiding lawsuits. It's genuinely good for business:
- Larger audience — you're opening your site to 25% of the population that many competitors ignore
- Better SEO — accessible practices (alt text, heading structure, semantic HTML) are exactly what search engines reward
- Improved usability for everyone — captions help people watching without sound, good contrast helps everyone in bright sunlight, keyboard navigation helps power users
- Stronger brand perception — customers notice when a business takes inclusion seriously
Building Accessible from Day One
Retrofitting accessibility onto an existing site is possible, but it's always more expensive and less effective than building it in from the start. That's why we bake accessibility into every project at Crozetti — semantic HTML, proper ARIA attributes, keyboard navigation, contrast-tested color palettes, and screen reader testing are part of our standard development process, not an add-on.
If your current site has accessibility gaps, or if you're planning a new project and want to get it right, let's talk about building something that works for everyone.