Ideally, every website would meet the Level AA criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the international standards for digital accessibility. Practically, that’s not the case: According to the most recent WebAIM analysis, 94.8% of the internet’s top million home pages have basic accessibility errors.
Business leaders often say that web accessibility “isn’t a priority,” given that inclusive design requires resources: You’ll need knowledgeable developers and web designers working around the clock to fix basic accessibility issues. Right?
Not necessarily. Most accessibility issues are fairly easy to fix — and if you’ve got five minutes, you can test your website for some of the most common problems, fix them, and provide your users with a better experience. Here are five issues to check right now.
1. Missing HTML Language Attributes
To start off strong, here’s an accessibility issue that you can fix in about a second (not counting the time you’ll take logging into Wordpress or whatever other CMS you’re using).
WCAG requires that the “the human language of each passage or phrase in the content can be programmatically determined,” with a few exceptions. Generally, that means including an HTML lang tag on each page of your website.
If your entire website is in U.S. English, you simply need this attribute on each page:
<html lang="en-us">
If parts of your page are in another language (for example, you’ve got a Terms of Service page with the same terms in a few different languages), things get more complicated — but really, they’re not that much more complicated. You’ll simply use the lang attribute to declare the language of each section.
For additional guidance, read: How The HTML Lang Attribute Helps Accessibility
How it Helps Accessibility
Screen readers (software that converts text to audio, primarily used by people with vision disabilities) use language tags to set their pronunciation rules. Web browsers also use language tags to display characters and scripts correctly.
With accurate language tags, your content will work predictably for all users.
2. Missing Alt Text
There’s a reason why nearly every digital accessibility article mentions alternative text (alt text): Missing or low-quality alt text is frustrating for AT users, and it’s extremely easy to fix!
The alt text should concisely describe the content and the context of an image (or graph, or other visual content) for users who can’t see it visually. A good approach: Imagine you’re describing your website to a friend over the phone. What details would they need to understand the purpose of the image?
There’s more to it than that, but again, not much. For a detailed guide, read: 5 Steps for Writing Alt Text for Accessibility.
How it Helps Accessibility
Screen readers will read alt text to your users, and the alt text will also be displayed if the image can’t load for some reason (for example, the user is browsing on a slow internet connection, or they intentionally turn off images in their web browser’s settings).
If you get into the habit of writing effective alt text, you’ll improve experiences for those users. You’ll also benefit from improved search engine optimization (SEO) and image organization.
3. Write Descriptive Page Titles and Subheadings
Depending on the size of your website, this may take more than 5 minutes — but it should only take a minute or two per page, so it qualifies as a quick fix. All pages on your website must have descriptive, unique titles. Most pages should also have subheadings, which break up the content and make it easier to understand.
Some quick tips:
- Page titles should concisely describe the topic of the page. This page, for example, uses the title of the blog as its title tag.
- Subheadings should divide the content into more digestible “chunks.” On this page, subheadings are used for each quick accessibility fix.
- Subheadings should appear in their nested order. That means that <h3> tags should only appear after <h2> tags, <h4> tags should only appear after <h3> tags, and so on.
We’ve written extensively about both page titles and subheadings. If you’re wondering whether your website needs this type of accessibility optimization, here are some good places to start:
- Why Page Titles Are Important for Web Accessibility
- Perform a Page Title Audit to Improve Mobile & Website Accessibility
- 3 Common Subheading Mistakes That Can Create Accessibility Issues
- Accessible Headings Are Great for Users (and Great for SEO)
How it Helps Accessibility
Page titles and subheadings help people “scan” your content to find the information that they need. Both titles and headings must be programmatically determinable, meaning that they’re identifiable by software — text that is visually formatted to appear like a subheading doesn’t count.
4. Poor Color Contrast
This is an issue that might take more than a few minutes to fix in some circumstances, but if you prioritize accessibility from the first stages of web design, it doesn’t take any extra time at all.
WCAG (specifically Success Criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)) gives us clear targets: a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between standard text and its background, and 3:1 for large text (which is 18pt and larger, or 14pt and larger if bold). Logos and purely decorative text get a pass, but anything meant to be read needs enough contrast.
You can test color-pairs against these guidelines with free tools like AudioEye’s color contrast checker. Get into the habit of testing every combination of colors before using them in your website’s design!
How it Helps Accessibility
Low-contrast text is one of the most common accessibility issues, and it makes browsing more difficult for people with low vision, color vision deficiencies (also called color blindness), and other vision disabilities.
Like many accessibility improvements, fixing contrast issues can help all users. Think about reading on a phone screen in bright sunlight; would you be comfortable reading light-grey text against a white background? Paying attention to color contrast is simply a good web design practice.
Don't Wait to Start Improving Web Accessibility
When you’re starting a web accessibility initiative, it’s important to set achievable goals. You don’t need to meet every WCAG criterion on day one. Any improvement you make will positively impact the experiences of users with disabilities.
Quick wins can significantly boost usability and send the message that you care about inclusive design. You simply need to start somewhere — and the simplest, quickest fixes tend to be the most important.
Ready to dive deeper? The Bureau of Internet Accessibility (BOIA) is here to help. Get in touch for expert audits, training, and remediation support, or start with a free automated website analysis from AudioEye.
