Website Accessibility
Build or improve your website so more people can navigate it, understand it, and use it successfully, including visitors who rely on assistive technology or interact with websites in different ways.
Accessibility Shouldn’t Be an Afterthought
Accessibility problems are often created during the design and development process. Poor color contrast, missing form labels, images without meaningful alternative text, navigation that requires a mouse, confusing heading structures, and controls that do not clearly communicate what they do can all create barriers.
Fixing these issues after a website is built can be more difficult and expensive than addressing them from the beginning. That is why we treat accessibility as part of good web design and development, not something bolted on afterward.
Accessibility Built Into the Website
Create a stronger accessibility foundation instead of relying on a widget or overlay to try to correct problems after the page loads.
Website accessibility means designing and developing your site so people with different abilities can navigate, understand, and interact with it. That includes people who may use screen readers, navigate by keyboard, enlarge text, have difficulty distinguishing certain colors, or experience other visual, auditory, cognitive, or motor limitations.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, provide an internationally recognized framework for making web content more accessible. We use that guidance to help identify and prevent common accessibility barriers.
This may include
- Semantic HTML and logical content structure
- Proper heading hierarchy
- Keyboard-accessible navigation and controls
- Descriptive links and buttons
- Form labels, instructions, and error handling
- Appropriate alternative text for meaningful images
- Sufficient text and interface color contrast
- Visible keyboard focus states
- Accessible menus and interactive elements
- Responsive layouts and text resizing
- Accessible use of ARIA where appropriate
- Testing for common accessibility issues
The outcome
A more usable website with fewer unnecessary barriers and a stronger accessibility foundation built into the site itself.
New Websites and Existing Websites
If you are building a new website, accessibility can be incorporated into the design, content, and development process from the beginning. This helps prevent many common problems before they become part of the finished site.
If you already have a website, we can evaluate it for accessibility issues and identify areas that should be improved. Depending on what we find, we can remediate individual problems, improve templates and reusable components, or recommend a broader rebuild when the existing site makes accessibility unnecessarily difficult to maintain.
Accessibility Is an Ongoing Process
A website is not permanently accessible simply because it passed a test when it launched. New pages, images, forms, plugins, design changes, and third-party services can introduce new issues over time.
We can help establish a stronger accessibility foundation and provide ongoing support as your website changes.
Automated Testing Isn’t Enough
Automated accessibility tools are useful for identifying certain problems, but they cannot determine whether every part of a website is actually usable. That is why accessibility should not be reduced to a score from a testing tool.
A stronger process combines automated testing with thoughtful design, development practices, and manual review of important interactions and content.
Better Accessibility Makes for a Better Website
Many accessibility improvements benefit everyone. Clear navigation makes a site easier to understand. Better contrast improves readability. Properly labeled forms reduce confusion. Logical headings make content easier to scan. Keyboard-friendly controls create more ways to interact with the site.
Accessibility is ultimately about removing unnecessary barriers between people and the information or services they are looking for.
Build Accessibility Into Your Next Website
Whether you are planning a new website or improving an existing one, we can help you identify accessibility issues and build a stronger foundation.
We’ll look at your website, your goals, and where accessibility should fit into the project.
Talk With Us About Website Accessibility →