The Website Accessibility Checklist Every Small Business Needs
Most small business websites fail basic accessibility checks — not because owners don't care, but because nobody handed them a clear list of what to fix. Meanwhile, ADA-related website lawsuits hit over 4,000 cases in the US last year, and the majority targeted businesses with under 25 employees. Add the fact that roughly 1 in 4 American adults lives with some form of disability, and accessibility stops being a nice-to-have.
This is the website accessibility checklist for small businesses we actually use when auditing client sites. Work through it once and you'll cover 90% of the issues that cause real problems for users and legal risk for owners.
Why Accessibility Matters Before You Touch the Code
Two things to understand before diving in:
- WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the standard courts and most regulators reference. You don't need perfection — you need a documented, good-faith effort toward AA compliance.
- Accessibility overlaps with SEO. Alt text, semantic HTML, proper headings, and readable contrast all help Google too. You're not doing extra work — you're doing the same work better.
The Foundational Checklist: Structure and Code
1. Use semantic HTML
Screen readers rely on tags to announce what's on the page. Replace generic containers with the right element:
- Use
<button>for actions, not styled<span>elements - Use
<nav>,<main>,<header>,<footer>instead of stacked divs - One
<h1>per page, then logical<h2>and<h3>nesting — don't skip levels for styling
2. Add a skip-to-content link
The first focusable element on every page should let keyboard users jump past the navigation:
<a href="#main" class="skip-link">Skip to main content</a>3. Set the page language
A single attribute that screen readers need: <html lang="en">. Missing it is one of the most common automated-audit failures.
Images, Media, and Visual Content
4. Write meaningful alt text
Every informative image needs a description. Decorative images get alt="" (empty, not missing).
- Bad:
alt="image1.jpg" - Bad:
alt="photo of a coffee shop"on the page hero (too vague) - Good:
alt="Barista pouring latte art at Brewhaus on Main Street"
5. Caption your videos
If you embed a YouTube product demo, turn on real captions — not auto-generated ones for anything customer-facing. For self-hosted video, add a <track> element with a VTT file.
6. Don't autoplay media with sound
It's distracting for everyone and disorienting for users with cognitive disabilities. If video must autoplay, mute it by default.
Color, Contrast, and Typography
7. Check contrast ratios
WCAG AA requires:
- 4.5:1 for normal text
- 3:1 for large text (18pt+ or 14pt bold)
- 3:1 for icons and UI components
That trendy light-gray body text on a white background? It probably fails. Run your palette through WebAIM's contrast checker before committing to a brand color.
8. Don't rely on color alone
If your form shows errors only by turning a field red, colorblind users miss it. Pair color with an icon, label, or text message: "Email address is required."
9. Allow text resizing
Users should be able to zoom to 200% without breaking your layout. Use relative units (rem, em) instead of fixed pixels for font sizes and line heights.
Navigation and Keyboard Use
10. Make everything keyboard-accessible
Unplug your mouse and try to use your own site. You should be able to:
- Tab through every link, button, and form field in a logical order
- See a visible focus indicator (don't remove the default outline without replacing it)
- Open and close menus, modals, and dropdowns with Enter, Space, and Escape
- Never get "trapped" inside a widget you can't tab out of
11. Label every form field
Every <input> needs a visible <label> connected via the for attribute. Placeholder text is not a label — it disappears the moment users start typing.
12. Group related fields
Use <fieldset> and <legend> for things like address blocks or radio button groups. It tells assistive tech that the fields belong together.
Content That's Easier to Read
13. Write at a reasonable reading level
Aim for an 8th-grade level for general audiences. Tools like Hemingway Editor or the Flesch-Kincaid score in Word will flag overly dense sentences.
14. Use descriptive link text
Screen reader users often tab through links in isolation. "Click here" tells them nothing. Use "Download our 2024 pricing guide" instead.
15. Break up long content
Short paragraphs, frequent subheadings, and bulleted lists help everyone — especially users with dyslexia or ADHD.
Testing Your Site
16. Run automated scans first
These catch 30–40% of issues in minutes:
- WAVE (wave.webaim.org) — paste your URL, get a visual report
- axe DevTools — Chrome extension, free for basic use
- Lighthouse — built into Chrome DevTools under the Audits tab
17. Then test manually
Automated tools miss context. Add these checks:
- Tab through the page from top to bottom
- Turn on a screen reader (VoiceOver on Mac, NVDA on Windows — both free) and listen to your homepage
- Zoom your browser to 200% and confirm nothing overlaps or disappears
- Disable CSS (View → Page Style → No Style in Firefox) and check the content still makes sense
18. Add an accessibility statement
A public page that lists your conformance target, known issues, and a contact email for accessibility complaints. It demonstrates good faith and is often the first thing a plaintiff's lawyer checks.
What to Skip (and Why)
One warning: avoid "accessibility overlay" widgets — the little wheelchair icons that promise instant WCAG compliance. They've been the subject of multiple lawsuits themselves, and the disability community broadly rejects them. They paper over problems instead of fixing them. Real accessibility happens in your HTML, CSS, and content — not in a JavaScript bandage.
If you've worked through this list and still see a long list of failures, that's usually a sign the underlying template or theme wasn't built with accessibility in mind. Rebuilding on a clean foundation is faster than patching a hundred small issues — which is exactly the kind of work we do at Axoxweb, building fast, accessible sites for small businesses from the ground up.
Need a site that passes accessibility audits and actually converts? Talk to Axoxweb about a build that gets it right the first time.