A website accessibility checklist for small business

A website accessibility checklist for a small business comes down to six checks: text alternatives on images, enough colour contrast, full keyboard use, labelled form fields, a sensible heading order, and a page that still works when zoomed in. Each one maps to a success criterion in WCAG, the international standard for accessible web content, and none of them needs a developer to test.

What is WCAG, and which version applies?

WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, published by the W3C. The current version, WCAG 2.2, has 13 guidelines organised under four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Each guideline has testable success criteria at three levels, A, AA and AAA, and the success criteria are what determine whether a site conforms. The W3C overview of WCAG sets this out.

For a business site, the practical target is the A and AA criteria. The six checks below are drawn from them.

Do your images have text alternatives?

Every image that carries information needs a text alternative that serves the same purpose, which is the requirement of success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content, Level A). In practice that means the alt text on a photo of a finished job says what the photo shows, and an image that works as a link or button has a name that says where it goes or what it does.

To check, right-click a few images and inspect the alt attribute, or turn on a screen reader and move through one page. Decorative images, such as a background flourish, should have empty alt text so they are skipped.

Is the text easy enough to read?

Text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, with 3:1 allowed for large text. That is success criterion 1.4.3 (Contrast Minimum, Level AA). Pale grey body copy, white text on a light photo and orange buttons with white labels are the usual failures.

To check, paste the text colour and background colour into any contrast checker. Test the button labels and footer links as well as the main copy.

Can you use the whole site without a mouse?

All functionality needs to be operable through a keyboard interface. That is success criterion 2.1.1 (Keyboard, Level A). Many people rely on the keyboard, including people who are blind and some people with mobility impairments.

To check, click once in the address bar, then press Tab repeatedly. You should be able to reach every link, menu item, button and form field, in a logical order, and see where the focus is at each step. A dropdown menu that opens only on hover, or a booking widget the Tab key skips over, fails.

Does every form field have a label?

Labels or instructions need to be provided whenever content asks for input. That is success criterion 3.3.2 (Labels or Instructions, Level A). A contact form where the only label is placeholder text that vanishes when you start typing is the common failure.

To check, fill in your own enquiry form and look at what is left on screen once you click into a field. Each field should keep a visible label that says what to enter. This also matters for the form you rely on to receive enquiries, which is why we cover testing your own enquiry pipeline in the same breath.

Do the headings make sense on their own?

Headings should describe the section under them and follow a logical order, one main heading per page and subheadings beneath it. Screen reader users can pull up a list of headings to move around a page, so a page where headings were chosen for their font size rather than their meaning is hard to navigate.

To check, read down only the headings on each key page. If the list reads like a sensible outline of the page, it passes.

Does the page still work when zoomed in?

Zoom the browser to 200% and then check the page on a phone. Text should stay readable, nothing should overlap, and buttons should stay reachable. Pages built with fixed widths tend to break first. A site built to adapt to screen size, which is the baseline for any modern build, usually passes without extra work.

What if a check fails?

Note each failure, then group them by cause. Colour and label problems are usually a change to the design settings that fixes the whole site at once. Missing alt text is a content job. Keyboard problems often come from a plugin, widget or custom component, and those need whoever built the site. If you are unsure how the site was put together, our guide to telling whether a site was built badly covers the checks that show up the same kind of problems.

Automated tools find only part of the issues, so use them as a first pass and do the six checks by hand as well. If you want someone to run them across your site and report back, request a free website audit.