Website Accessibility for Small Businesses: The Basics

An accessible website is one that people with disabilities can use: a customer who is blind and has a screen reader read the page out loud, someone who can't use a mouse, someone with low vision or color blindness, someone who is deaf watching your video. For a small business site, most of the work comes down to four basics you can check yourself: describe your images, keep text readable against its background, make everything work with a keyboard, and label your form fields. The usual yardstick is WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

It's also plain good business. If a screen reader can't make sense of a plumber's site, that's a call the plumber doesn't get. And the same fixes help everyone else: the older customer who zooms in, the person reading your menu on a phone in bright sun, the homeowner filling out a quote form with one thumb.

What the law says, in general terms

This is general information, not legal advice. For a question about your own business, talk to a lawyer.

The Americans with Disabilities Act covers businesses open to the public, like shops, restaurants and service companies. The Department of Justice's guidance on web accessibility and the ADA, published in March 2022, says the Department "has consistently taken the position that the ADA's requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web."

The same guidance says:

The Department "does not have a regulation setting out detailed standards" for this.
Businesses "have flexibility in how they comply," but they still have to comply.
Existing technical standards, WCAG and the Section 508 Standards the federal government uses for its own sites, "provide helpful guidance concerning how to ensure accessibility of website features."

The page also notes that it doesn't reflect the separate requirements for state and local governments published in 2024. Those are rules for government websites, not for private businesses.

WCAG in a minute

WCAG is published by the W3C, the group behind many of the web's standards. The W3C's WCAG overview lists the versions, 2.0 from 2008, 2.1 from 2018 and 2.2 from 2023, and says they're backwards compatible: a site that meets 2.2 also meets the earlier ones. Each requirement, called a success criterion, sits at one of three levels: A, AA or AAA.

WCAG is written for developers and it's long. You don't need to read it to get the basics right. For a small business site, aim for Level AA, which includes every check below.

The checks you can run yourself

Alt text on photos

Alt text is a short description attached to an image. Screen readers read it out, and browsers show it if the image fails to load. The W3C's Easy Checks call it "a short description that conveys the purpose of an image." ADA.gov's guidance lists missing alt text among common website barriers.

Describe what matters in the photo: "Finished cedar deck with built-in bench seating," not "IMG_4471" and not "deck builder deck contractor best decks."
Your logo's alt text is your business name.
Purely decorative images, like a background texture, get empty alt text so screen readers skip them.
Words inside an image don't reach a screen reader unless you repeat them, and a whole menu won't fit in alt text. If your menu, price list or coupon is a photo or a flyer, put the same words on the page as real text. Restaurant websites covers why that helps with Google too.

Contrast

Light gray text on white, white text over a busy photo of a truck, white letters on a yellow button: these are hard to read for people with low vision, and for anyone outdoors on a phone. ADA.gov names poor color contrast as a common barrier. WCAG Level AA asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. A free online contrast checker tells you whether a pair of colors passes: paste in the text color and the background color.

Keyboard

Some people can't use a mouse or a touchscreen and move through a page with a keyboard, or a device that works like one. ADA.gov lists "mouse-only navigation" as a barrier. To check your own site:

Open it on a computer and click once in the address bar.
Press Tab, again and again. Each press should move to the next link, button or form field, in a sensible order.
Watch for the focus outline that shows where you are. If you can't see it, a keyboard user can't either.
Try to open the menu, fill out the form and send it without touching the mouse.

If you get stuck, can't reach the menu, or lose track of where the outline went, that needs fixing.

Form labels

Every field on your quote or contact form needs a visible label that says what goes in it: "Name," "Phone," "Address of the job," "What needs fixing." Gray hint text inside the box that disappears when you start typing doesn't count as a label. ADA.gov's guidance lists forms without "labels that screen readers can convey to their users" as a barrier, along with unclear instructions and missing error messages. So:

Mark required fields in words, not only with a red asterisk or a color.
When something's wrong, say what in plain words: "Please add a phone number so we can call you back."
Keep the form short. A contact form that gets replies covers which fields to ask for.

A few more worth checking

Captions on videos. If your homepage has a video of the crew with someone talking, add captions. ADA.gov lists videos without captions as a barrier.
Headings in order. One main heading, then section headings, so a screen reader user can jump around the page the way you skim it.
Links that say where they go. "See our drain cleaning services" instead of "click here."
Zoom. Zoom your browser to 200% and check that nothing overlaps or disappears.
Page titles. The text in the browser tab should say what each page is, like "Water heater repair in Joliet" rather than "Home."

Be careful with one-click fixes

You'll come across plugins and toolbars that promise to make a site accessible by adding one line of code. The fixes above are changes to the site itself: real descriptions on your photos, real labels on your form, colors that pass. Be cautious with anything that promises to skip that work, and don't read a clean automated score as proof that a site is accessible. The W3C says its own quick checks "cover just a few accessibility issues" and that "more extensive assessment is needed to evaluate accessibility comprehensively."

If you're building or redesigning

Accessibility is easiest to get right while a site is being built, because the colors, the fonts and the form are being chosen anyway. If you're planning a redesign, add these checks to the list the new site has to pass before it goes live.

For a quick read on your current site, run our free website checker. Along with Google's own mobile speed test, it includes accessibility checks, so you'll see where your site stands before you start fixing. Like any automated test it can't catch everything, so do the keyboard and form checks above yourself too.