July was Disability Pride Month, a time to recognize the history, identity, and ongoing advocacy of the disability community. And while the conversations tend to peak in July, the work they point to doesn’t stop. One of the most practical places businesses can show up year-round is somewhere most people never think about: their website.
If you’ve heard the term “web accessibility” and nodded like you knew what it meant, this one’s for you.
What Web Accessibility Actually Means
Web accessibility is the practice of designing and building websites so that everyone can use them, including people with visual, hearing, cognitive, and motor disabilities.
That looks like things you might not even notice if you don’t need them: alt text on images so screen readers can describe them out loud, enough color contrast so text is legible for people with low vision, keyboard navigation for people who can’t use a mouse, captions on video for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.
It’s not a niche concern. About 1 in 4 adults in the United States has some type of disability. That’s not a small segment of your audience; that’s a significant portion of the people landing on your website every day.
The State of the Web Right Now
Here’s the part that should give every business owner pause.
In 2025, over 96% of websites still had at least one detectable accessibility failure, and the average homepage had around 51 accessibility errors. The three most common issues were missing alt text on images, links that weren’t descriptive enough for screen reader users, and form fields without proper labels.
These aren’t obscure technical oversights. They’re basic design decisions, and they’re locking people out.
71% of users with disabilities say they’ll leave a site if it isn’t accessible. That’s not a traffic problem or a marketing problem. That’s a design problem, and it has a direct impact on your bottom line.
It’s Also a Legal Conversation
The Americans with Disabilities Act applies to websites, not just physical spaces. Accessibility lawsuits against businesses have been increasing steadily, and they don’t just target large corporations. Small businesses have been named in ADA web accessibility cases too.
This isn’t meant to scare you; it’s meant to make the point that accessibility isn’t optional, and waiting until there’s a problem to address it is a much harder position to be in than building with it in mind from the start.
What the Business Case Looks Like
Beyond compliance, accessible design is good business.
People with disabilities in the U.S. hold nearly half a trillion dollars in disposable income, and that number doesn’t account for the spending of their families, friends, and advocates. On inaccessible sites, cart abandonment rates average around 69%. On accessible sites, that number drops to 23%.
Accessible design also tends to improve the experience for everyone: cleaner layouts, better mobile usability, faster load times, clearer navigation. The overlap between good accessibility and good design is significant.
Where to Start If You’re Not Sure Where You Stand
You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Start with a few quick checks:
Run a free audit. Tools like WAVE (wave.webaim.org) or Google Lighthouse will scan your site and flag the most obvious issues: missing alt text, low contrast, unlabeled buttons. It takes about five minutes and gives you a clear starting point.
Check your color contrast. Text needs to meet a minimum contrast ratio against its background to be legible for people with low vision. If you’re not sure yours meets the guidelines, WebAIM’s Contrast Checker is free and takes 30 seconds.
Add alt text to your images. This is one of the most common failures and one of the easiest fixes. Every image on your site should have a brief description of what it shows, not keyword stuffing, just an honest description.
Make sure your site works without a mouse. Tab through your website using only your keyboard. Can you get to every link, button, and form? If you get stuck, your users will too.
Caption your video content. If you have video on your site, explainers, testimonials, reels embedded from social — captions make that content accessible to users who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or watching without sound.
Accessibility Is a Design Decision
Everything on this list comes back to how your site was built and how it’s maintained. Accessibility isn’t a plugin you install and forget, it’s a practice that gets baked into your design decisions from the beginning.
That’s where working with a design team that thinks about it matters. At Visual Appeal, we build websites and brand systems with accessibility in mind, not as an afterthought, but as part of what it means to build something that actually works for the people using it.
If you’re not sure where your site stands, let’s take a look together.
