Accessibility usually gets treated as something a developer either did or did not do when the site was built. In practice it drifts. Every image uploaded without a description, every heading used because it looked the right size, every button labelled “click here” moves the site slightly further from usable.
That is why a website accessibility checklist belongs with maintenance rather than with the build. Below is the version worth running yourself, without needing a specialist.
One thing to say clearly first: this is a practical guide, not legal advice. If you have a specific legal obligation, take proper advice on it.
Start with the things that drift
These four account for most of what goes wrong on an ordinary business site, and all four are caused by adding content rather than by the original build.
- Images without alt text. Every meaningful image needs a short description of what it shows. Decorative images should have empty alt text so screen readers skip them rather than announcing a filename.
- Headings used for size. Headings are a structure, not a typeface. A page should have one H1 and then H2s and H3s in order. Choosing H4 because it looked right breaks the outline people navigate by.
- Link text that says nothing. “Click here” and “read more” are meaningless out of context, and out of context is exactly how screen reader users often encounter them. Say where the link goes.
- PDFs used instead of pages. A price list or a menu locked in a PDF is harder to read on a phone and often impossible with assistive technology. If the information matters, it belongs on a page.
Then check the things built once
Colour contrast. Light grey text on white is the most common failure on small business sites, and it is usually a design choice nobody questioned. Any contrast checker will tell you in seconds whether your body text passes.
Keyboard navigation. Put your mouse aside and press Tab through a page. You should be able to reach every link and form field, and you should always be able to see where you are. A focus outline removed for looks is a real barrier.
Form labels. Every field needs a visible label attached to it. Placeholder text disappears as soon as somebody types, which is exactly when they most need to know what the field was.
Video captions. If you publish video, captions matter — and most people watching on a phone in public are using them too.
How to check without buying anything
Working out how to make website accessible pages without a specialist starts here. An automated checker will find perhaps a third of real problems and is still worth running, because that third is the mechanical part: missing alt text, contrast failures, missing labels. Several free browser extensions do this well.
The rest needs a person, and two tests get you most of the way. Tab through the site with the keyboard only. Then turn on the screen reader already built into your phone and try to complete one task — find a price, submit the contact form. It is an uncomfortable ten minutes and it teaches more than any report.
The business case, without the guilt
Accessibility is usually argued as an obligation, which makes it easy to postpone. The practical case is simpler: most of the fixes above make the site better for everybody.
Alt text describes your images to search engines as well as to screen readers. Proper heading structure is what lets Google understand a page and what lets anybody skim it. Readable contrast helps every visitor in bright sunlight on a phone, which in India is most of them. Descriptive link text helps a reader scanning for the right one.
None of this requires caring about compliance to be worth doing. It is the same work either way, and framing it as ordinary quality rather than as a legal chore is what gets it done.
Be careful with overlay widgets
Accessibility overlays — the plugins that add a floating accessibility button — are marketed as a one-line fix. They are worth approaching sceptically. They sit on top of the underlying markup rather than correcting it, and disability advocacy groups have been consistently critical of them.
Alt text, heading structure, contrast and labels are the actual work. They are not glamorous and they are permanent.
Why it belongs on the monthly list
A site can be checked thoroughly in March and drift by June, because in between somebody uploaded twelve product photos without descriptions and added a page with three H4s and no H2.
The maintenance version is small: when new content goes up, check the images have alt text and the headings are in order. That is most of it. Our website maintenance checklist covers the rest of the monthly round, and ongoing website upkeep is where these checks happen without anybody having to remember them.