What accessibility means, in plain terms
Website accessibility means ensuring your website can genuinely be used by people with a range of abilities and circumstances including visitors with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive differences through specific, achievable design and technical practices, rather than assuming every visitor experiences your site the same way you do.
Why this matters beyond compliance considerations
Accessibility is sometimes framed purely as a legal or compliance concern, but the practical business case is broader an accessible website is generally also a clearer, more usable website for every visitor, not just those with specific accessibility needs. Many accessibility practices (clear text contrast, logical navigation, descriptive link text) directly improve the general usability and conversion potential of a site for all visitors, not as a separate, narrow consideration.
The basic, achievable accessibility practices every business website should meet
Sufficient colour contrast between text and background. Text that is difficult to read due to low contrast (light grey text on a white background, for instance) is genuinely difficult for many visitors, not only those with diagnosed visual impairments this is also one of the simplest, lowest-cost accessibility improvements to implement.
Descriptive alt text on images, which serves visitors using screen readers but also, as covered in our Technical SEO & Core Web Vitals pillar, directly benefits SEO by helping search engines understand image content.
Keyboard-navigable interactive elements. Some visitors navigate websites using a keyboard rather than a mouse, due to motor differences or simply personal preference ensuring buttons, links, and forms can be reasonably navigated and activated via keyboard alone is a foundational accessibility practice.
Clear, logical heading structure, which both assists screen reader users in understanding page organisation and, again connecting to SEO, helps search engines understand your content's structure and hierarchy.
Readable font sizes, avoiding excessively small text that is genuinely difficult for many visitors to read comfortably, particularly relevant given the prevalence of mobile viewing covered in mobile-first design for Indian users.
Video content with captions or transcripts where feasible, serving visitors with hearing differences as well as the meaningful number of visitors who watch video content with sound off by default, particularly common on mobile in public settings.
How to assess your current website's accessibility without deep technical expertise
Free, accessible tools like the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (a browser extension) can scan your website and flag common accessibility issues in plain language, giving a reasonable starting assessment without requiring specialised technical knowledge to interpret.
Frequently asked questions
Accessibility requirements and their enforcement vary by jurisdiction and continue to evolve; rather than treating this purely as a legal compliance question, the practical business case broader usability for all visitors and improved SEO from related practices provides reasonable motivation regardless of the specific current legal landscape.
Many of the basic practices covered above (proper alt text, sufficient colour contrast, logical heading structure) are relatively low-cost to implement, particularly if built in from the start of a website project rather than retrofitted later similar to the broader principle covered in websites that are built for SEO from day one.
Several accessibility practices directly overlap with SEO best practices descriptive alt text, logical heading structure, and clear content organisation all serve both purposes simultaneously, meaning genuine accessibility investment often delivers SEO benefit as a meaningful secondary effect, not as two entirely separate, competing priorities.