Around one in five people in the UK has a disability. An inaccessible website excludes them, and under the Equality Act 2010 service providers have a duty to make reasonable adjustments — which extends to websites.
The encouraging part is that most accessibility problems on a small business site come down to a handful of recurring issues, and fixing them improves the site for everyone.
- 1
Run an automated scan for the obvious failures
Use WAVE or Lighthouse’s accessibility audit on your main pages. Automated tools catch perhaps a third of issues but they catch the blatant ones cheaply: missing alt text, poor contrast, unlabelled form fields. Start here, and do not stop here.
- 2
Fix colour contrast
Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, large text 3:1. Light grey on white is the most common failure and appears on a great many otherwise well-designed sites. Check with a contrast checker rather than by eye.
- 3
Write alt text that conveys the meaning
Every image that carries information needs alternative text describing what it shows, not what it is called. Purely decorative images should have empty alt attributes so screen readers skip them. "IMG_4471.jpg" as alt text is worse than nothing.
- 4
Test the whole site with only a keyboard
Put the mouse aside and navigate with Tab, Enter and the arrow keys. Can you reach every link, open every menu, complete every form? Is the focus indicator always visible? Dropdown menus and custom form controls are where this most often breaks.
- 5
Use headings as structure, not styling
One H1 per page, then H2 and H3 in order, without skipping levels for visual effect. Screen reader users navigate by heading. A page where headings were chosen for their font size is close to unnavigable, and it also weakens how search engines read the page.
- 6
Label every form field properly
Each input needs a real label element, not just placeholder text — placeholders vanish on typing and are frequently unreadable. Error messages must say what is wrong in words, and must not rely on colour alone to indicate the problem.
- 7
Test with a screen reader
Use VoiceOver on a Mac or iPhone, or NVDA on Windows, and listen to your homepage and contact form. It is uncomfortable and it is the most informative twenty minutes you will spend. Automated tools cannot tell you that a page is technically valid but incomprehensible.
The legal position
The Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments for disabled people, and this is generally understood to cover websites. Public sector bodies have stricter, explicit obligations under separate 2018 regulations. There is no UK equivalent of the wave of US lawsuits, but the duty is real and the reputational risk is genuine.
A realistic standard
WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the usual target and what public sector regulations require. Full conformance is demanding; the steps above will get a typical small business site most of the way, and partial progress genuinely helps people.
Frequently asked questions
For public sector bodies, explicitly yes under the 2018 regulations. For private businesses, the Equality Act’s duty to make reasonable adjustments is generally understood to extend to websites, though it is less prescriptive.
Would rather we did it?
These guides are here so you can do it yourself. If you would rather hand it over, that is what we do.
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