What is website accessibility and does it matter?

Short answer: Website accessibility means building your site so everyone can use it, including people who are blind, have low vision, can't use a mouse, or are hard of hearing. It matters because those are real customers, because UK law expects it, and because the same things that help them help everyone. Good accessibility is just good design.

What accessibility actually means

Roughly one in five people in the UK has some form of disability, and they use websites too. Accessibility is about making sure your site works for them — not as a favour, but because they're customers with money to spend like anyone else.

In practice it covers things like: someone using a screen reader that reads pages aloud, so images need text descriptions; someone who can't use a mouse and navigates by keyboard, so buttons and links need to work that way; someone with low vision who needs strong colour contrast to read the text; someone hard of hearing who needs captions on video. None of it is exotic. It's mostly about building the site properly in the first place.

Why it matters for your business

Beyond doing right by people, there are three solid business reasons to take accessibility seriously:

• More customers. An inaccessible site quietly turns away a slice of your market. Every visitor who can't use your site is a sale lost to a competitor whose site they can.
• The law. The Equality Act 2010 requires businesses not to discriminate against disabled people, and that reasonably extends to your website. Public sector bodies face stricter, explicit rules, but no business is exempt from the general duty.
• Better for everyone. The changes that help disabled users — clear text, good contrast, sensible structure, fast loading — make the site easier for all your visitors. It's the same principle behind what makes a good business website.

There's also a Google angle. Search engines read your site much like a screen reader does, so a well-structured, accessible site is easier for Google to understand, which quietly supports how your site ranks.

The practical basics

You don't need to become an expert. The bulk of accessibility comes from getting a handful of things right:

• Colour contrast — dark text on a light background, or the reverse, so it's easy to read. Pale grey text on white fails a lot of people.
• Text descriptions on images — so screen readers can describe them and nobody misses the meaning.
• Proper headings — pages structured with real headings, not just big bold text, so they can be navigated logically.
• Keyboard use — every link, button and form usable without a mouse.
• Readable text — a sensible font size and not cramming everything together.

These overlap heavily with plain good design and with responsive, mobile-first design. Build it well once and accessibility largely comes along for free.

How we handle it

We build accessibility in from the start rather than bolting it on later. Sensible contrast, proper structure, image descriptions, keyboard-friendly navigation and readable text are part of how we make a site, not a premium extra. It's simply part of building something properly, and you can see the standard in our recent work.

Our sites are one-off builds — Basic £300, e-commerce £750 — and you own them outright. Accessible design is included because it makes your site work for more of your customers and stands you in good stead legally, at no extra charge. If you want the wider picture of what a well-built site involves, our web design page lays it out.

Want a site that works for every customer who lands on it? Get a clear price and we'll build it accessible from the ground up.