Website accessibility, explained for people who run a business

If you've heard the word "accessibility" thrown around and nodded along without being totally sure what it means for your website, you're not alone. Most of the business owners I talk to are in the same spot. So here's the plain version.

What it actually means

An accessible website is one that people with disabilities can use. That includes someone who is blind and uses a screen reader (software that reads the page out loud), someone who can't use a mouse and gets around with the Tab key, someone with low vision who zooms in to 200%, and someone who is colorblind.

That's a lot more people than you might guess. The CDC says more than 1 in 4 US adults has some kind of disability. That's over 70 million people, and a lot of them are your customers or would like to be.

Why it matters for a small business

There are two reasons, and honestly the first one is the bigger deal.

You're losing customers. If someone can't figure out how to book an appointment because your "Book Now" button is invisible to their screen reader, they don't email you to complain. They just go to the next business on Google.

Lawsuits are real, and they're mostly aimed at small businesses. In 2025, more than 3,100 website accessibility lawsuits were filed in federal court, up 27% from the year before. Add state courts and it's over 5,000. Most of the businesses getting sued aren't big brands. They're small and mid-sized companies. And getting sued once doesn't make you safe: nearly half of 2025's federal cases were against businesses that had already been sued before.

The rulebook: WCAG

When people talk about an "accessible" website, they usually mean one that meets WCAG 2.1 AA. WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It's a long list of checks, like "every image needs a text description" and "text needs enough contrast against its background to be readable."

You don't need to memorize it. You just need to know it exists, and that it's the standard a lawyer or a court will point to.

How most sites are doing

Not great. Every year a group called WebAIM tests the home pages of the top one million websites. In 2026, 95.9% of them had accessibility errors they could catch automatically, with an average of 56 errors per page. That number actually got worse this year.

The good news is that almost all of those errors fall into six boring, very fixable buckets:

• Text that doesn't stand out enough from the background
• Images with no description
• Form fields with no label
• Links with no text (usually an icon with nothing behind it)
• Buttons with no text
• The page not saying what language it's in

None of these are hard to fix. They just get skipped when nobody's checking.

Accessibility isn't a one-time thing

This is the part people miss. A site can be fully accessible the day it launches, and then six months later someone uploads 20 photos with no descriptions and adds a pop-up that traps keyboard users. That's why every site we build is built to WCAG 2.1 AA and tested at launch, and why it's worth having someone check new content before it goes live.

If you're not sure where your site stands, I'm happy to take a quick look. Just reach out through the contact page.

This post is general info, not legal advice. If you've received a demand letter, talk to a lawyer.