Insights

The Website Accessibility Checklist: 8 Common Issues (And How to Fix Them)

Here’s the thing about web accessibility: the same handful of mistakes show up on almost every site. Small business sites, Fortune 500 sites, sites that paid a fortune for design and sites built on a free template. WebAIM, the research group that audits the top million home pages on the internet every year, has been publishing this list every year since 2019, and the top six or seven issues barely move from one year to the next.

That is actually good news. It means accessibility is not a sprawling subject where you need to learn a thousand rules before you can do anything useful. It is a short list of common patterns, most of which have plain-English fixes, and most of which a small site owner can handle without a developer.

What follows is that short list, written for the person who is not an accessibility specialist but wants to make a real dent. I have included the categories that show up most often in audits and the simplest version of the fix for each. None of this makes your site fully accessible or compliant on its own. That takes a real review by someone who tests with assistive technology, and I have included a note at the end about how to find that person. But knowing what is on this list, and roughly what to do about each one, will put you ahead of most sites on the web.

1. Low Color Contrast

What it is. Text that is too close in lightness to its background. Light gray on white is the classic. Pastel-on-pastel buttons are the close cousin.

Why it matters. It is the most common accessibility issue on the web by a wide margin, found on about 84% of home pages in WebAIM’s 2026 audit. It is also one of the issues that affects the largest number of visitors, including people with low vision, older readers whose eyes have shifted, anyone with eye fatigue, and anyone reading in bright light.

The fix. Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 against its background. Large text, roughly 18 pixels bold or 24 pixels regular and up, needs 3 to 1. You can check any color pair in a few seconds with WebAIM’s contrast checker. The most common change for a small business site is moving body copy from a medium gray to something closer to near-black. I wrote more about this specifically in Why Half Your Visitors Can’t Read Your Phone Number.

2. Images Without Alternative Text

What it is. An image on the page that has no text description for a screen reader to announce. The screen reader reads the file name, or nothing, or just “image.”

Why it matters. Alt text is how a blind or low-vision visitor knows what is on your page. WebAIM finds more than half of home pages have at least one image with no alt text at all, and many more carry alt text that is unhelpful, like “image” or a filename. For a product page, every image without alt text is a product that visitor cannot see.

The fix. Every meaningful image gets a short description of what it is and, if it matters, what it does. A product photo of a blue ceramic mug gets “blue ceramic mug, hand-thrown,” not “IMG_4023.jpg” and not “image.” Purely decorative images get an empty alt attribute (alt="") so the screen reader skips them entirely. Most modern site builders have an alt text field next to every image upload. The work is usually populating fields you already have.

3. Form Fields Without Labels

What it is. A contact form, booking form, or checkout where the boxes have placeholder text inside them but no visible label above. The placeholder disappears the moment a visitor types, and screen readers often cannot associate it with the field.

Why it matters. Forms are usually where your visitor is trying to actually do something: contact you, book an appointment, donate, register. WebAIM finds form labels missing on more than half of all home pages. Unlabeled fields turn the most important moment on your site into a guessing game for visitors using assistive technology.

The fix. Every field gets a visible label above or beside it, not a placeholder serving double duty. Required fields say “required” in text, not just with a red asterisk. Error messages name the field they refer to (“Email address is required”) rather than just “Error.” If a form has an obvious heading like Contact Us, it does not need every field labeled twice, but each input does need its own label tied to it in the markup.

4. Pages That Do Not Work With a Keyboard

What it is. A site where a visitor cannot navigate using only the Tab key. Menus that open only on mouse hover. Pop-ups that trap focus. Buttons that do nothing when pressed with Enter or Space.

Why it matters. Keyboard accessibility is foundational. Screen reader users, people with motor impairments, anyone using a switch device, and anyone whose mouse hand is full of a baby or a coffee all rely on it. If a sighted visitor can complete a task with a mouse but a keyboard-only visitor gets stuck halfway, that task is effectively unavailable to a meaningful slice of your audience.

The fix. Unplug your mouse. Press Tab repeatedly. Make sure every interactive element can be reached, that you can tell at a glance which one is currently focused (a visible outline, not just a faint color change), and that you can complete every important task without ever touching the trackpad. If a menu only opens on hover, give it a click or keyboard-friendly version too.

5. Links and Buttons That Do Not Say Anything

What it is. Links labeled “click here” or “read more” or “learn more,” repeated all over the page. Buttons made of a graphic with no underlying text. Image-only social media icons with no accessible name.

Why it matters. A screen reader user often navigates a page by pulling up a list of all the links on it. A list that reads “click here, click here, read more, read more, click here” tells them nothing about where any of those links go. WebAIM finds empty or unclear links on more than 46% of home pages.

The fix. Link text should describe the destination. “Read our 2025 annual report” instead of “click here.” Icon-only buttons need an accessible name, usually through an aria-label attribute, that says what the button does (“Open menu,” “Close dialog,” “Share on Facebook”).

6. PDFs That Are Basically Images

What it is. A scanned menu, brochure, or report uploaded to your site as a PDF. To a sighted reader it looks fine. To a screen reader it is a blank rectangle.

Why it matters. Many of the most important documents on small business sites live in PDFs: restaurant menus, intake forms, price lists, annual reports for nonprofits. When those PDFs are scans rather than real text, they are invisible to assistive technology.

The fix. Where you can, replace PDFs with real HTML pages. A menu, a price list, or a service description is almost always better as a page on your site than a file to download. When a PDF really is the right format (a long report, a form people print), make sure it is a “tagged” PDF with real selectable text and proper structure, not a scan of a paper document. Modern PDF tools and design software can export tagged PDFs by default.

7. Color Carrying Meaning by Itself

What it is. Information conveyed through color alone. Required fields marked with only a red asterisk. Form errors shown by turning the input border red with no error message. Charts where the only difference between two lines is hue.

Why it matters. Roughly 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some form of color vision deficiency. Anyone using a high-contrast mode, a screen reader, or a black-and-white printout loses the meaning entirely.

The fix. Pair every use of color with a second cue. The required asterisk gets the word “required” near it. Error states get an error message, not just a red border. Charts add patterns, labels, or shapes so the data is still legible without color.

8. A Heading Structure That Does Not Make Sense

What it is. Headings on the page that are styled to look like headings (big, bold) but are not actually marked up as headings in the code. Or pages that skip from an H1 straight to an H4 because someone liked the smaller size. Or sites with no H1 at all.

Why it matters. Screen reader users navigate long pages by jumping from heading to heading, the way a sighted reader scans for bold text. A page with no real heading structure forces them to read everything top to bottom. WebAIM finds skipped heading levels on more than 40% of pages.

The fix. One H1 per page (your page title or main heading). H2s for the major sections under it. H3s for subsections under those. Do not skip levels for visual reasons. If a section heading needs to look smaller, change its style, not its level. Most modern editors let you set the level and the visual size independently.

Where to Start if This List Feels Long

You do not have to do all of this at once, and the order matters more than the speed. The fastest meaningful wins are usually contrast, alt text on your most important images, and form labels. Those three handle a large share of the daily friction your visitors experience, and they rarely require a developer. If you can give yourself one focused afternoon a quarter, you can make real progress without ever hiring anyone.

If you want to see what your site actually looks like to visitors with vision differences before you start, the three-click browser test in How to Test Your Website’s Readability in 60 Seconds is the fastest way to spot the most obvious issues. For the deeper case on why building these things into your foundation matters more than bolting on a tool to compensate, see The Foundation and the Overlay.

When to Bring in a Professional

Automated tools and self-audits catch only a portion of accessibility issues. Deque’s own analysis puts the ceiling around 57%, and most independent estimates land lower. The rest need a person, ideally one who tests with real assistive technology and knows what to look for in your specific kind of site.

If your site is small (a few pages, a contact form, no checkout or booking flow), a developer with accessibility experience can usually handle a review. Ask whether they have done accessibility work before, and whether they test with a screen reader as part of their process. If they hesitate on either question, look for someone else.

If your site is larger, or if it handles bookings, payments, healthcare, financial information, or anything where a barrier could keep someone out of a service they need, hire a dedicated accessibility professional for a proper audit. The credential to look for is the IAAP (International Association of Accessibility Professionals), which certifies practitioners through programs like CPACC and WAS. Most experienced accessibility consultants list “audit,” “WCAG review,” or “accessibility assessment” as a service. Expect them to deliver a written report with prioritized findings, not just a scanner output.

And if you have been pitched a widget as legal protection rather than as a comfort tool, the longer answer is here. The short version: no widget protects you from an ADA lawsuit, no matter what the sales page says.

The point of bringing in a professional is not to outsource caring about your visitors. It is to get the part of the work that requires a trained eye done by someone who has one. The list above is what you can do without that help. An audit is what tells you the rest.

Even after a clean audit, there will be visitors a foundation-and-audit approach was never built to reach: the older reader, the migraine sufferer, the person on a phone in bright sun who just wants the text a little bigger. For that long tail, a reading-comfort tool like EasyNav is what fits in the gap. It does not change your foundation, your audit, or your legal exposure. It just gives those visitors a quiet way to adjust how they read.

If you walk away from this with three things on your fix list and a plan to call someone about the rest, that already puts you ahead of most sites on the web.