How to Improve Website Accessibility

Why Website Accessibility Matters for Your Business

Over 6.2 million Canadians live with a disability that affects how they use the web. When your site fails to accommodate these users, you lose revenue and risk legal consequences. The business case goes beyond compliance.

Accessible websites rank better in search engines. Google’s algorithms reward sites with clean semantic HTML, proper heading structures and fast load times. These are the same elements that accessibility requires. A study by WebAIM found that 96.3% of home pages had detectable WCAG failures in 2024. Fixing what most sites ignore gives you a competitive advantage.

Accessibility also improves usability for all visitors. Keyboard navigation helps power users. Proper contrast helps users on mobile devices in bright sunlight. Captions help people watching video in noisy environments. When you follow a comprehensive accessibility guide, you build a better experience for your entire audience.

Legal Requirements in Canada

The Accessible Canada Act establishes accessibility as a right for federally regulated organizations. Provincial legislation adds additional requirements. Ontario’s AODA mandates WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliance. British Columbia’s Accessible British Columbia Act is expanding requirements through 2026 and beyond.

In the United States, ADA lawsuits related to website accessibility exceeded 4,000 in 2025. Canadian courts are following similar trends. Proactive compliance costs far less than reactive litigation.

The SEO Connection

Search engines and assistive technologies parse your site in similar ways. Both rely on semantic HTML to understand content structure. Both need descriptive text alternatives for non-text content. Both benefit from logical navigation patterns. Investing in accessibility directly strengthens your web development foundation.

Audit Your Current Accessibility State

Before fixing anything, you need a clear picture of where your site stands. A structured audit identifies violations by severity and helps you prioritize remediation.

Automated Testing Tools

Start with automated scanners to catch the low-hanging fruit. These tools identify roughly 30-40% of accessibility issues. They excel at detecting missing alt text, color contrast failures, missing form labels and broken ARIA attributes.

• axe DevTools: Browser extension that scans the rendered DOM. Provides specific WCAG rule references and fix suggestions.
• WAVE: Visual overlay tool from WebAIM. Highlights errors directly on the page so you see them in context.
• Lighthouse: Built into Chrome DevTools. Scores accessibility alongside performance and SEO.
• Pa11y: Command-line tool for CI/CD integration. Automate accessibility checks in your deployment pipeline.

Run these tools on every unique template your site uses. A blog post template, a landing page template and a contact page template may each have different issues.

Manual Testing Protocols

Automated tools miss the majority of accessibility problems. Manual testing catches issues that require human judgment.

Keyboard navigation test: Unplug your mouse. Tab through every interactive element on your page. Verify that focus indicators are visible, that tab order follows visual order and that you can activate every button and link with Enter or Space.

Screen reader testing reveals how assistive technology interprets your content. NVDA (Windows) and VoiceOver (Mac) are free. Navigate your site with the screen reader active and listen to how it announces headings, links, images and form controls. If the experience is confusing to you, it is unusable for someone who depends on it.

Consider scheduling a website UX audit that includes accessibility as a core evaluation criterion. Professional audits catch issues that internal teams often overlook.

Prioritizing Fixes

Categorize issues by impact and effort. Critical issues block users from completing tasks. These include missing form labels, keyboard traps and absent alt text on functional images. Fix these first. Moderate issues degrade the experience but do not prevent task completion. Minor issues are best-practice improvements that polish the experience.

Fix Your Semantic HTML Structure

Semantic HTML is the foundation of accessibility. Screen readers use HTML elements to build a document outline and announce content type. Divs and spans convey no meaning. Replace them with elements that do.

Heading Hierarchy

Use one <h1> per page for the primary topic. Follow with <h2> for major sections and <h3> for subsections. Never skip levels. A screen reader user can navigate by headings to scan your content. A broken hierarchy makes that navigation unreliable.

<!-- Correct heading hierarchy -->
<h1>Page Title</h1>
  <h2>First Major Section</h2>
    <h3>Subsection Detail</h3>
    <h3>Another Subsection</h3>
  <h2>Second Major Section</h2>
    <h3>Subsection Detail</h3>

Landmark Regions

Use <header>, <nav>, <main>, <aside> and <footer> to define page regions. Screen readers expose these as landmarks so users can jump directly to the content they need. Every page should have exactly one <main> element wrapping the primary content.

Lists and Tables

Use <ul>, <ol> and <li> for lists. Screen readers announce list length and item position. Use <table> with <thead>, <th> and <caption> for tabular data. Never use tables for layout.

Implement Proper Image Accessibility

Images require text alternatives that convey their purpose. The right approach depends on the image’s role in the content.

Informative Images

Write alt text that describes the image’s content and function. Be specific. “Bar chart showing organic traffic growth from 2,000 to 8,500 monthly sessions between January and June 2026” is useful. “Chart” is not.

Decorative Images

Purely decorative images that add no information should have empty alt attributes: alt="". This tells screen readers to skip them. Apply this to background patterns, spacer images and visual flourishes.

Complex Images

Diagrams, infographics and charts need longer descriptions. Use <figure> and <figcaption> to pair the image with a visible description. For very complex images, link to a detailed text description on a separate page or use aria-describedby to reference a hidden description.

Build Accessible Forms

Forms are where accessibility failures cause the most frustration. Users cannot complete purchases, submit inquiries or create accounts when forms lack proper markup.

Labels and Instructions

Every input needs a visible <label> element with a for attribute matching the input’s id. Placeholder text is not a substitute for labels. Placeholders disappear when users start typing, leaving them without context.

<!-- Accessible form field -->
<label for="email">Email Address</label>
<input type="email" id="email" name="email"
  aria-describedby="email-hint" required>
<span id="email-hint">We will never share your email.</span>

Error Handling

Display error messages adjacent to the field that caused them. Use aria-invalid="true" on the field and aria-describedby to link the error message. Provide an error summary at the top of the form that lists all issues with links to each field.

Keyboard Operability

Tab order must follow visual order. Custom dropdowns, date pickers and modal dialogs need keyboard event handlers. Test that users can open, navigate and close every interactive component using only the keyboard.

Ensure Color and Contrast Compliance

WCAG 2.1 AA requires a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18px bold or 24px regular). Many sites fail this requirement on buttons, links and placeholder text.

Testing Contrast Ratios

Use the WebAIM Contrast Checker or browser DevTools to test every text-background combination on your site. Pay special attention to text on images, gradient backgrounds and hover/focus states.

Do Not Rely on Color Alone

Never use color as the only way to convey information. Error states need text labels and icons in addition to red highlighting. Charts need patterns or labels in addition to color coding. Link text should be underlined or otherwise distinguishable from surrounding body text.

Add ARIA Where Needed

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attributes supplement native HTML semantics. Use them when HTML alone cannot convey the component’s role, state or properties.

When to Use ARIA

Native HTML is always the first choice. A <button> element already has an implicit role. Adding role="button" to a <div> is a workaround, not a best practice. Use ARIA for custom components like tabs, accordions, modals and tree views that have no native HTML equivalent.

Common ARIA Patterns

• aria-label: Provides an accessible name when visible text is absent. Use on icon buttons and navigation landmarks.
• aria-expanded: Indicates whether a collapsible section is open or closed. Update this value with JavaScript when the state changes.
• aria-live: Announces dynamic content changes. Use aria-live="polite" for non-urgent updates and aria-live="assertive" for critical alerts.
• role=”alert”: Immediately announces content to screen readers. Use for form validation errors and system notifications.

Make Multimedia Accessible

Video and audio content requires text alternatives. This is non-negotiable for compliance and a major usability win for all visitors.

Captions and Transcripts

Provide closed captions for all video content. Auto-generated captions from YouTube or similar platforms have error rates between 10-30%. Edit them for accuracy. Provide full transcripts for audio-only content such as podcasts.

Audio Descriptions

Videos that convey important information visually (demonstrations, tutorials, presentations) need audio descriptions that narrate visual content during pauses in dialogue. This allows blind users to follow the full content.

Implement Ongoing Accessibility Monitoring

Accessibility is not a one-time project. Every new page, feature or content update can introduce violations. Build accessibility into your development workflow.

CI/CD Integration

Add automated accessibility testing to your build pipeline. Tools like Pa11y CI and axe-core can fail builds that introduce WCAG violations. This catches issues before they reach production.

Content Author Training

Train content creators on writing accessible content. This includes proper heading use, descriptive link text, meaningful alt text and plain language writing. Create a checklist they follow before publishing.

Periodic Audits

Schedule full manual audits quarterly. Technology evolves and so do accessibility standards. WCAG 2.2 introduced new success criteria in late 2023. WCAG 3.0 is in development. Regular audits ensure you stay ahead of requirements.

If you need a professional assessment of your site’s current state, request a free audit from our team. We evaluate accessibility alongside performance and SEO to give you a complete picture.

Frequently Asked Questions