Insights

How to Test Your Website’s Readability in 60 Seconds

Most sites are built on large monitors by people who have a vision of what content they want to include, but less certainty on how to make it welcoming and easy to navigate.

I realized this the first time I sent the URL of my new site to my mom. Watching her interact with that page was painful. She pinched to zoom, accidentally clicked links, and missed the main pages I wanted her to discover. This was early on in my site building career. I was just a hobbyist, not a developer, and I googled ways to see if my site was easy to read. I am guessing several of you landed on this page with a similar search.

Turns out, you can preview your site through different eyes for free with three clicks. All you need is a browser and a minute.

Demo chiropractor website homepage in normal view, showing hero, services grid, and cookie banner. — The demo site looks fine at a glance. The problems hide in plain sight until you test for them.

Step 1: Open Inspect

Right-click anywhere on your page and choose Inspect. A panel opens on the side or bottom of your screen. This is the same developer tools panel professional engineers use. You do not need to understand most of it. We are going to use two small features, and nothing you do here changes your live site or installs anything on your computer.

Chrome DevTools Inspect panel open alongside the demo website. — The DevTools panel opens beside your page.

Step 2: Emulate Vision

Look for the three dots at the top right of the panel. Click those and hover over More tools, then select Rendering. You will notice a new tab open at the bottom of the panel.

Chrome DevTools menu showing the path: three-dot icon, More tools, Rendering. — The path through the menu: three dots, More tools, Rendering.

Scroll inside that tab until you see the option to Emulate vision deficiencies. Try Blurred vision, then try Reduced contrast.

Chrome DevTools Rendering tab showing the Emulate vision deficiencies dropdown. — The Rendering tab. Vision emulation lives here.

Now try to navigate your page. Can you still read it? This is roughly what your site looks like to a visitor in their late sixties without their reading glasses, or to anyone with mild eye fatigue at the end of a long day.

Demo website under Blurred vision emulation. Light gray subheading and cookie banner text are difficult to read. — Blurred vision applied. Notice how the lighter elements start to disappear first.

Contact section of demo website under Reduced contrast emulation. Phone number, address, and hours are nearly invisible. — Reduced contrast on the contact section. The phone number, address, and hours are nearly invisible. This is exactly what an older visitor sees if their eyes do not pick up subtle gray on white.

Step 3: Test for Scale

This one is even simpler. No developer tools or menus. Just one keyboard shortcut.

Press Cmd and the plus key (Mac) or Ctrl and plus (Windows). Each press zooms your page up by 10 percent. Hit it two or three times until you reach about 150 percent. Then resize your browser window narrower. Scroll and try to click your buttons. Look at where your pricing block or contact info ends up.

To reset, press Cmd 0 or Ctrl 0.

Demo website navigation at 150 percent zoom. Menu items wrap onto two lines and the Book Now button overlaps the Contact link. — At 150 percent zoom, the navigation collides with itself and Book Now overlaps the Contact link.

Zoom does not break most modern sites. Well-built pages scale up calmly, and most visitors will not notice a thing. The pages that do reveal something are showing you the short list worth fixing. A button overlapping text, a menu colliding with itself, a pricing card pushing the Book Now button off-screen.

Most of your older visitors will not press Cmd plus. Keyboard shortcuts are not how older visitors browse the internet. Some pinch their screen or lean forward and squint. Most leave. Almost none are telling you about it. That is why this test is yours to run on their behalf. If your page still feels calm at 150 percent, you have already done more than most sites bother to. If it does not, you have your fix list.

The Waiting Room Effect

Most readability tools want to give you a score. This test asks a simpler question. When an older visitor lands on your site, do they feel welcome, or do they have to work to be there?

A good waiting room tells you something about the office before anyone has said a word. The chairs are comfortable, the lighting is warm but not harsh. A website does the same job. The visitors who feel welcomed are the visitors who stay long enough to read and book.

More on this idea in The Waiting Room Effect. On how EasyNav compares to other tools in the category, see The Foundation and the Overlay.

Common Fixes Worth Knowing

Small Text. Body copy under 16px is too small for comfortable reading. 17px or 18px is usually better.

Low Contrast. Light gray on white is the most common readability sin. If you have to squint on a sunny day, so do your visitors. A free tool like WebAIM’s contrast checker will tell you exactly where your text falls short.

Tiny Buttons. Tap targets under 44 pixels are hard for anyone with hand tremors or arthritis. That is a larger group than you would guess.

Small Print. “Close” and “Skip” links smaller than your body copy can feel like an afterthought. Sizing them the same as your main text signals that every action matters, not just the ones you wanted the visitor to take.

Contact section of demo website with EasyNav's dark contrast mode applied. White text on black background is fully readable even while the browser emulates reduced contrast. — The same contact section with EasyNav’s dark contrast on. The address, phone, and hours are readable again, even while the browser is still emulating reduced contrast.

I built EasyNav because most visitors will never open a developer panel. They just want a site to work. EasyNav gives them these same comfort controls through one quiet button on your site.