What Is Web Accessibility and Why Is It Important?

What is web accessibility and why is it important?

Many business owners, especially those with physical premises will be aware of the need to consider how to make their premises accessible to those with disabilities or special needs. However, very few website owners are aware that they also have a legal obligation to take reasonable steps to maximise the accessibility of their site.

Not only that, but there are also significant advantages for businesses in improving their website accessibility.

“But we don’t have disabled users visit our website” I hear you cry.
Yes - you do… and you know it by the name of Google (* other search engines are available). Keep reading to understand why you should view Google as a disabled user.

In this article, we will explore some of the most common accessibility considerations including providing examples of problems which users may face, and solutions that are designed to help improve website accessibility.

What is web accessibility?

Web accessibility refers to the design and development of websites, apps, tools, and technologies so that people with disabilities can use them. It is a legal requirement that websites (mainly websites which are designed to be used by the public, or by staff/employees, as opposed to personal websites) are accessible to users with various disabilities. If your website isn’t accessible, users could potentially (albeit the risk is relatively small), claim that they are being discriminated against and seek to take legal action against you.

Examples of common accessibility needs and considerations

When building websites, some of the most common disabilities and needs that we need to consider as developers or website owners include users who suffer with one or more of the following conditions:

• Blindness or visual impairments
• Colour blindness
• Dyslexia
• Deafness or audio impairments
• Epilepsy
• Physical or motor skill impairments

Now; when you think about Google as a search engine you’ll see it actually demonstrates many of the above inabilities.

Search engines cannot “see” as such; they don’t have eyes. They also don’t have ears so can’t “hear”; and whilst they can interact with certain elements, they are not a physical entity and so experience the web in a different way to most users. As a result, search engines rely on other mechanisms to better understand certain elements which are common on websites such as images, videos and so on. We’ll touch on those later in this article.

The law surrounding web accessibility

The laws relating to web accessibility vary around the globe and therefore website owners need to consider the laws not only of the country in which they are located, but also potentially the territories in which they operate.

The Gov.UK website states that, following the latest accessibility regulations all websites should follow the international WCAG 2.2 AA *Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 (w3.org)). This states that websites should be ‘perceivable, operable, understandable and robust’.

• Perceivable - everyone using the website should be able to perceive, (visualise, hear, interact with) the content of the website, regardless of any disabilities they may have.
• Operable - everyone using the website should be able to use its features, for example, without a mouse despite any physical disabilities.
• Understandable - all users should be able to clearly understand your website, whether that’s content or functionality, in spite of disability.
• Robust - your website should work with a variety of technologies, such as, browsers, future technology and assistive devices (screen readers, etc).

The guidelines also state that websites should follow the Equality Act 2010 (Equality Act 2010 (legislation.gov.uk)). Not following these guidelines would be considered discriminatory.

Who benefits from web accessibility?

Addressing website accessibility carefully and professionally results in benefits both for individuals and businesses alike, which is partly why it's so important.

How individuals benefit:

Web accessibility ensures that everyone, including people with disabilities can interact with websites or apps effectively. Everyone should be able to read the news for example, but someone who is blind may not be able to do that. Websites being compatible with a screen reader means that person can get the information they are entitled to.

Also, web accessibility improves the quality of a user's experience on the internet, which, in turn, means they’re more likely to visit or return to your website. This also applies to people who live in England but may not have English as their first language, for example, using ‘Plain English’ (read more here: Plain English Campaign) is a way of improving the quality of their experience because they can understand it more easily.

Individuals who benefit from web accessibility and how:

• Blind and visually impaired users - According to the latest NHS statistics, 5/1000 people in the UK are blind or visually impaired. Making sure your website works with a screen reader helps these people to access content including text and images, and improves their experience of navigating around the site.
• Colour blind users - About 4.5% of the population of the UK are colour blind. Monitoring colour contrast levels on your website means these users benefit because they can read content and see links, etc clearly.
• Dyslexic users - It is estimated that 1 in every 10 people are dyslexic (Dyslexia - NHS (www.nhs.uk)). Choosing clean fonts, and keeping sentence lengths to around 15 to 20 words, helps increase the readability of your content. 
• Choose suitable language and terminology, appropriate to your target audience

The ‘Plain English’ campaign is designed to remove jargon and ‘gobbledygook’, enabling your content to be easy to understand. This helps a whole range of users including those who are dyslexic, or who do not have English as their first language.

• Users with physical disabilities - According to the Office for National Statistics, 17.7% of the English population have a physical disability. By using correctly structured semantic code, you make it easier for assistive or adaptive technology devices such as eye-tracking software or “tabbing” devices to function, thus helping users successfully navigate your website.
• Deaf users - According to the British deaf Organisation, there are roughly 9 million people in the UK who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Ensuring videos on your website have subtitles enables deaf users to interact with this media.

Why businesses benefit:

There are many ways in which a business can benefit from web accessibility, such as benefits to do with SEO, markets and their reputation.

• SEO - As touched on above, when we consider the needs of disabled users, we also make it much easier for search engines to access and understand our website content, which in turn, benefits the website’s SEO. In addition, one of the things search engines will look at as part of their ranking algorithm is the quality of the user experience (UX). Therefore enhancing your customer’s experience on your website makes search engines more inclined to place your website nearer the top of the results page.
• Expanding your market - If your website is accessible to more people, more people are going to use it, and, if you're selling things, potentially buy from it. To give that some context, whilst there is no current data available for 2024, earlier research estimates that online spending by people with disabilities (also known as “The Purple Pound”) is worth between £16bn and £24bn in the UK alone each year. Therefore, making necessary changes so that your website appeals to the people who wouldn’t have looked at your website before, provides you with the ability to increase your customer base and sales. 
• Brand reputation - If you follow accessibility laws and make your website a place for everyone, you’ll develop a positive reputation for being inclusive. This will drive people to visit your website because they’ll appreciate that you’ve put effort into making sure everyone can see your website.

Factors to consider when making your website accessible:

Using descriptive link text

Many websites have links which will take you to another piece of content, but imagine you use a screen reader and all the links on the website are labelled ‘click here’ or ‘read more’. How are you supposed to know what the links are for? Labelling links with something more informational would make your website more accessible to those people. For example, if a link takes you to a success story, instead of it saying ‘read more’ it could say ‘to read the full story, click here’.

Adding title attributes on links

If using descriptive link text isn’t possible from a design point of view or it just doesn’t flow, you can add a title to the link on the coding for your website, so you can’t see it. It will still say ‘click here’ or ‘read more’ but when a screen reader is reading it, it will read the title instead so the person can better understand the link. For example ‘to read more about…. click here’.

Adding “Skip to…” links

Screen readers don’t see websites as we do, they see it without any styling and read everything on the page. If we don’t tell them to skip certain content it will read everything, which can be annoying and take a long time. Using ‘skip to…’ links means we can get past this.

• ‘Skip to content’ - On the BBC website, for example, if someone who uses a screen reader just wants to read a certain article, instead of reading the whole content of the page like the navigation and all the headings, there’s a setting you can add where the screen reader will just skip to the content. This makes the individual’s experience better because they can go straight to what they want instead of having to go through the whole page. This is a ‘skip to content’ link
• ‘Skip to navigation’ - You can do the same thing but skip to navigation instead so, if the person is finished with the content it can automatically take them back to the navigation so they can select more content.

Using the “tab” key to navigate

Some people who have physical disabilities such as parkinson’s disease may not be able to use a mouse to click on things on the internet, so use the “tab”, arrow and “enter” keys instead to navigate around a page. Tab moves from left to right and top to bottom similar to the way we read.

Making sure your website is compatible with this is very important when making it accessible.

Allowing customisation

Allow people to customise your website so it suits them. For example, you may have made the text size slightly larger so people with dyslexia can read it more easily, but it may not quite be enough. If someone needs to they can customise the font or page size just for them and better use your website. Also it would be helpful to some colour blind and/ or dyslexic people if they could change the colour of the background of your website. Some people find it easier to differentiate between characters on a blue or yellow background.

Semantic structure

Making sure you differentiate between different headings and text by importance like using H1s for the main page title and H2s for subheadings. If subsequent sections have additional sub-sections (child sections), then you might add a H3 and so on.

This helps individuals who use screen readers to understand the structure and flow of a page, the screen reader would know to specify the difference in headings. This means blind or visually impaired people get the same message from the page that people with better sight do.

Using bullet lists also aids readability and conveys semantic meaning. Additionally, some screen readers will inform the user how many list items exist in a list before reading the whole list out loud. This provides users with the opportunity to skip the list if it’s not something they are interested in.

How can you check the accessibility of your website?

So you’ve read all of this and want to check if your website meets the standards? A good way of seeing how accessible your website is, is by using an accessibility checker. Some effective ones are: axe DevTools | Developer Tools for Accessibility Testing (deque.com) , Lighthouse - Chrome Web Store (google.com)

Do you want to make web accessibility a priority?

Is accessibility important to you? Don’t wait any longer, take the first step now and contact us at 01993 835432 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..