Manual Accessibility Testing with a Screen Reader The most revealing accessibility test is to experience your site the way disabled users do. Putting the mouse aside and listening to a page through a screen reader exposes problems no auto...

Captions and Transcripts for Video Video and audio are everywhere, but they exclude people who cannot hear them — and many who can but are in a quiet office or a noisy street. Captions and transcripts make that content available to everyo...

Accessible Tables and Data Tables are perfect for presenting rows and columns of related data, but only if they are coded properly. A table that is just boxes drawn on screen leaves screen-reader users unable to tell which figure belongs ...

Accessible Notifications and Live Regions Modern sites constantly update without a reload — a 'message sent' confirmation, an error appearing, a basket count changing. Sighted users notice these visually, but screen-reader users will miss...

Accessible Modals and Pop-Ups Modals — those overlay boxes that appear on top of a page for sign-ups, confirmations or alerts — are notorious for accessibility problems. Done badly, they trap keyboard users or leave screen-reader users un...

Language Attributes and Screen Reader Pronunciation Screen readers can speak many languages, but they need to be told which one to use. Setting the language of your page — and of any passages in a different language — ensures words are pr...

ARIA: When to Use It and When Not To ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) is a set of extra HTML attributes that describe roles, states and properties to assistive technology. It exists to fill gaps that plain HTML cannot, particu...

Accessible Links and Button Labels Links and buttons are the verbs of your website — they take people somewhere or make something happen. When their labels are vague, users who navigate by listening to controls out of context have no idea...

Form Autocomplete and Input Purposes Filling in forms is tiring, and repetitive for anyone who does it often. By telling the browser what each field is for — name, email, address — you let it offer to autocomplete details, saving everyone...

Accessible PDFs and Documents PDFs and downloadable documents are often the most overlooked part of an otherwise accessible website. A scanned or unstructured PDF is just a picture of text — screen readers cannot interpret it at all. ...

Building Accessibility into the Design Phase The cheapest, most effective time to address accessibility is at the very beginning, in the design phase. Retrofitting an inaccessible build is far more expensive and disruptive than designing ...

Accessibility Statements: What to Include An accessibility statement is a public page explaining how accessible your site is, what standard it aims for, and how to get help if something does not work. It demonstrates good faith and gives ...

Accessible Charts and Infographics Charts and infographics turn data into a story at a glance — but only for people who can see and interpret them. Without care, they shut out blind users entirely and confuse people with colour blindness ...

WCAG Explained: A, AA and AAA Levels WCAG stands for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the internationally recognised standard for accessible websites. It is the benchmark most organisations and regulators point to when they ask w...

Accessible Colour Palettes Colour is central to brand identity, but it has to work for people who see colour differently or struggle with low contrast. An accessible palette keeps your brand recognisable while staying readable for everyon...

Auto-Playing Media and Accessibility Media that plays automatically — background video, sound, or animation — can be jarring and disruptive. For screen-reader users, unexpected audio competes with their software; for others, it is simply ...

Designing for Dyslexia and Cognitive Load Accessibility is not only about physical disabilities. A large number of people have dyslexia, attention differences or other cognitive conditions that make dense, cluttered pages hard to process....

Accessible Forms and Error Messages Forms are where customers do business with you — enquiries, sign-ups, checkouts. If a form is hard to complete, you lose the very people who were ready to act. Accessible forms make sure everyone can fi...

Heading Structure and Document Outline Headings do more than make text bigger. They create the outline of your page — the table of contents that screen-reader users rely on to understand and navigate content. A logical heading structure i...

Alt Text: Describing Images Properly Alt text is a short written description attached to an image. Screen readers announce it to people who cannot see the image, and it is shown if the image fails to load. Good alt text means no one misse...

Time Limits and Giving Users Control Some sites impose time limits — a session that expires, a checkout countdown, a form that times out. For people who read slowly, type with difficulty, or use assistive technology, these limits can make...

Reading Level and Plain Language Clear writing is an accessibility feature. Dense, jargon-heavy text excludes people with cognitive differences, those reading in a second language, and frankly anyone in a hurry. Plain language helps every...

Focus Indicators and Why They Matter When you move through a page with the keyboard, the element you are currently on is said to have focus. A focus indicator — usually an outline or highlight — shows where you are. Without it, k...

Keyboard Navigation: Using a Site Without a Mouse Many people cannot or do not use a mouse. They rely on the keyboard — or devices that mimic one — to move through a site using the Tab key, arrow keys and Enter. If your site only works wi...

Skip Links and Landmarks Most pages start with the same header, logo and navigation. A keyboard or screen-reader user would have to wade through all of it on every single page before reaching the content. Skip links and landmarks let them...

Accessible Drag-and-Drop Alternatives Drag-and-drop feels intuitive with a mouse, but it is impossible for keyboard-only users and very difficult for people with motor impairments. Any feature that relies solely on dragging excludes a sig...

Accessibility Testing Tools Automated testing tools scan your pages and flag many accessibility issues in seconds. They are an excellent first line of defence and a great way to catch regressions as a site grows. That said, no tool...

Text Resizing and Zoom Support Many people increase text size or zoom into a page to read comfortably. WCAG requires that content stays usable when text is enlarged up to 200%, with nothing cut off, overlapping or disappearing. A l...

Touch Target Sizes for Motor Impairments On a touchscreen, every button and link is something you have to tap accurately. For people with tremors, limited dexterity or larger fingers, tiny tap targets crammed together are a constant sourc...

Accessible Carousels and Sliders Carousels — rotating banners that cycle through slides — are popular but frequently inaccessible. Auto-rotation can move content away before someone has finished reading, and hidden slides can confuse scre...

Accessibility in Single-Page Applications Single-page applications (SPAs) update content without reloading the whole page, which feels fast and modern. But that very behaviour can break accessibility, because screen readers expect a page ...

Motion, Animation and Vestibular Disorders Animation can make a site feel polished, but large or unexpected movement can cause real harm. For people with vestibular disorders, sweeping parallax effects and spinning transitions can trigger...

The Business and Legal Case for Accessibility Accessibility is the right thing to do, but it is also a sound commercial and legal decision. In the UK, the Equality Act places a duty on organisations not to discriminate, and that extends t...

Colour Contrast Requirements Colour contrast is the difference in brightness between text and the background behind it. When contrast is too low, text becomes hard or impossible to read — especially for people with low vision, colour blin...

The Four Principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust All of WCAG is organised around four simple principles, often shortened to POUR. Every detailed rule sits under one of them, so understanding the four giv...

Why Accessibility Matters for Your Business Accessibility means building your website so that people with disabilities — and everyone else — can use it without barriers. Around one in five people in the UK has a disability, so an inaccess...

An Accessibility Audit: What to Expect An accessibility audit is a structured review of your site against WCAG, combining automated tools with hands-on testing. It tells you exactly where you stand, what the priority issues are, and how t...

Common Accessibility Mistakes We Fix Over many projects, the same accessibility problems crop up again and again. The good news is that most are well understood and straightforward to put right once they are spotted. Knowing the us...

Screen Readers and How They Read Your Page A screen reader is software that converts on-screen content into speech or braille, letting blind and low-vision users navigate the web. Popular examples include JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver. Underst...

Accessibility and SEO: The Overlap Accessibility and search engine optimisation are often treated as separate disciplines, but they share a great deal of common ground. Many of the practices that help disabled users also help search engin...