Your website looks good. It loads, the contact form works, and customers have never complained. So it’s easy to assume everyone who visits can use it. But for a lot of people, that isn’t the case.
Someone using a screen reader may land on your homepage and hear “image, image, link, button” with no idea what any of it means. Someone with low vision may not be able to read your light gray text. Someone who can’t use a mouse may get stuck in your menu and never reach your contact page. They don’t call to tell you. They just leave.
Website accessibility is about making sure people with disabilities can use your site. It’s also one of the most overlooked parts of a small business website, and it’s worth a closer look.
More of Your Customers Are Affected Than You Might Think
According to the CDC, more than 1 in 4 adults in the United States (28.7%) have some type of disability. That includes difficulty with vision, hearing, mobility and cognition. Add in older customers whose eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and people trying to read your site on a phone in bright sunlight, and you’re talking about a large share of the people you want to reach.
If a meaningful part of your audience has a hard time using your website, that’s not just a compliance question. It’s lost calls, lost form submissions and lost business.
Most Websites Have Problems, and the Same Ones Keep Showing Up
You’re not alone if your site has accessibility issues. In its 2026 analysis of the top one million home pages, WebAIM found detectable accessibility failures on 95.9% of them, with an average of 56.1 errors per page.
The good news is that the most common problems are well known and fixable. WebAIM found these issues again and again:
- Low-contrast text that’s hard to read (83.9% of home pages)
- Images with no alternative text (53.1%)
- Form fields with no labels (51%)
- Empty links (46.3%)
- Empty buttons (30.6%)
- No page language set (13.5%)
According to the report, those six types of issues made up 96% of all the errors detected. In other words, you don’t have to solve every possible problem at once to make a real difference.
The Legal Risk Is Real for Businesses of Every Size
The Department of Justice has said that businesses open to the public need to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. And plaintiffs are filing lawsuits.
According to law firm Seyfarth Shaw, 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits were filed in federal court in 2025, a 27% increase over 2024. UsableNet, which also tracks state courts in New York and California, counted more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits in 2025, and found that 64% of the companies sued in 2025 had annual revenue under $25 million.
So this isn’t only a big-company problem. Small and mid-size businesses get demand letters too, and dealing with one is a lot more expensive and stressful than fixing the issues ahead of time. (As always, talk to your attorney about your specific legal situation.)
Be Careful With "One Line of Code" Fixes
You may have seen accessibility widgets or overlays that promise to make your site compliant automatically. It sounds like an easy answer. Unfortunately, it usually isn’t.
In 2025, the Federal Trade Commission finalized an order requiring accessiBe, one of the best-known overlay companies, to pay $1 million. The FTC alleged that the company’s claims that its tool could make any website compliant were false, misleading or unsubstantiated. The order bars the company from making those claims without evidence to back them up.
A widget can’t rewrite unclear link text, add meaningful descriptions to your photos, or fix a form that was built the wrong way. Real accessibility comes from how the website itself is designed and built.
Start With the Basics You Can Check Yourself
You don’t need to be a developer to spot some of the most common issues. Take 15 minutes and try these:
- Use only your keyboard. Press Tab to move through your homepage. Can you reach the menu, the buttons and the contact form? Can you always see where you are on the page?
- Look at your text. Is any of it light gray on white, or white on a busy photo? If it’s hard for you to read, it’s harder for others.
- Check your images. Do important photos and graphics have alt text that describes them? In WordPress, you can see this in the Media Library.
- Test your forms. Does every field have a visible label, or are you relying on placeholder text that disappears once someone starts typing?
- Read your links. Do they say where they go, or do they all say “click here” or “learn more”?
- Watch your videos. Do they have captions?
If you find problems in several of these areas, that’s usually a sign your site needs a more thorough review.
Accessibility Helps Everyone, Including Your SEO
Here’s something business owners don’t always realize: many accessibility improvements also make your website better for everyone else.
Clear headings help visitors scan a page. Readable text and obvious buttons make it easier to take the next step. Descriptive alt text and well-structured pages help search engines (and AI search tools) understand your content. Simple, well-labeled forms get filled out more often. That’s why accessibility fits naturally with good search engine optimization and conversion optimization.
Make Accessibility Part of Your Website, Not an Afterthought
Accessibility isn’t a one-time project. Every new page, blog post, photo and form can introduce new issues. The most effective approach is to build it into how your website is designed and maintained:
- Choose a theme and design that support good contrast, readable fonts and clear navigation
- Add alt text and captions as part of your normal content process
- Review new pages and forms before they go live
- Run a periodic audit to catch issues that slip in over time
If you’re already planning a redesign, that’s the perfect time to get it right from the start. Our web design team builds accessibility into the design and development process instead of bolting it on later.
How EduCyber Can Help
EduCyber has been helping Denver-area businesses, nonprofits and schools build websites that work for the people using them. We can review your current site for common accessibility issues, explain what we find in plain language, and help you prioritize what to fix first. Whether that means a few targeted updates or a full rebuild, the goal is the same: a website more of your customers can actually use.
Final Thoughts
Most business owners never set out to build a website that shuts people out. It happens gradually, through low-contrast design choices, missing image descriptions and forms that were never tested. The fix doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Start with the basics, avoid quick-fix promises, and make accessibility part of how your website is built and maintained.
Your website should be open to every customer who wants to do business with you. If you’re not sure whether yours is, let’s talk.
