Strategy
Accessible Websites Are Just Better Websites
By the LA Web Design team6 min read
Accessibility gets treated as a compliance chore, which is why it usually gets skipped. It's more useful to think of it as building for the full range of people who might visit: someone using a screen reader, someone with a tremor, someone with poor vision, and also someone outdoors in bright sun on a cracked phone with one hand full. The fixes are largely the same.
Contrast is the most common failure and the easiest fix
Light gray text on white looks refined in a design file and becomes unreadable on a phone outside. There's a measurable standard for this — body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 against its background — and free checkers report it in seconds. This single change improves readability for everyone, not only for people with low vision.
Alt text, written like you're describing it out loud
Every meaningful image needs a short description in its code. Screen readers read it aloud, it appears when an image fails to load, and search engines use it to understand the picture. Describe what's in it and why it matters — “polished concrete floor in a finished warehouse” — not a file name and not a pile of keywords. Purely decorative images should be marked decorative so they're skipped.
Everything should work with a keyboard
Plenty of people move through a website by keyboard rather than mouse. Press Tab on your own pages and watch where the outline goes. You should be able to reach every link, button, and form field in a sensible order, see clearly which one is selected, and open the menu without a mouse. Websites that strip the focus outline for looks break this completely.
Label the form fields properly
A placeholder that disappears when you start typing isn't a label. Every field needs a real label attached to it in the code, so a screen reader announces it and so the text doesn't vanish the moment someone starts filling it in. Error messages need to say what's wrong and how to fix it, in words, not just a red border.
Structure the page with real headings
Headings should describe the outline of the page and run in order, rather than being picked because one looked the right size. Screen reader users jump between headings the way sighted readers skim. A page with one heading, or with sizes used at random, removes that ability entirely. Search engines read the same structure.
Don't rely on color alone
If the only thing marking a required field, an error, or a status is a color, anyone who doesn't perceive that color the same way gets nothing. Add an icon, a word, or an underline alongside it. It's a small habit that costs nothing once you're in it.
Where to start, and the legal part
Run a free automated checker for the obvious issues, then do the manual pass: tab through the pages, turn the phone brightness down, read it outside. Automated tools catch maybe a third of real problems. And while nobody can promise immunity, businesses do receive accessibility demand letters, and a website that covers these basics is a far less appealing target than one failing on contrast and labels.