Website accessibility means building websites that can be used by people with disabilities — including those with vision impairments who use screen readers, people with motor impairments who navigate by keyboard rather than mouse, and people with cognitive differences who benefit from clear structure and plain language. It’s both a legal consideration and a commercial one.
In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in the provision of goods and services — and the Human Rights Commission has confirmed that this applies to websites. While there’s no mandated technical standard for private sector websites (unlike government websites, which must meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA), a DDA complaint related to inaccessible website content is legally possible and has occurred in Australian courts.
Beyond the legal dimension, the commercial case for accessibility is straightforward: approximately one in five Australians lives with some form of disability. A website that excludes a fifth of its potential audience is leaving commercial opportunity on the table — and often failing customers who’ve already chosen to do business with that company.
The Most Common Accessibility Problems on Local Business Websites
Images without alt text. Screen readers used by visually impaired visitors read aloud the content of a web page — including alt text descriptions of images. An image without alt text is simply skipped or read as a filename (“IMG_4721.jpg”), providing no information. Meaningful alt text on every image is both the most common accessibility failure and one of the easiest to fix.
Poor colour contrast. Light grey text on a white background, or dark text on a dark background, is difficult or impossible to read for people with low vision or colour vision deficiency (affecting approximately 8% of males and 0.5% of females). WCAG guidelines recommend a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text. Most design tools and browser extensions can check contrast ratios automatically.
Forms that aren’t labelled correctly. A contact form where the placeholder text inside the input field is the only label — and disappears when the user starts typing — creates problems for screen reader users who can’t see which field they’re completing after they’ve started typing. Visible, persistent labels above each form field solve this problem.
Videos without captions. Video content without captions is inaccessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors, and also to visitors watching in a sound-sensitive environment. YouTube’s automatic captions are a starting point; manually corrected captions are more accurate and better serve all viewers.
Keyboard navigation not functional. Some users navigate entirely by keyboard — moving through page elements using the Tab key and activating them with Enter. Websites built with custom JavaScript components that don’t support keyboard navigation, or with interactive elements that can only be triggered by mouse click, exclude this user group. Proper semantic HTML and ARIA labels ensure keyboard navigation functions correctly.
At Click Websites, accessibility best practices — alt text, colour contrast, form labelling, semantic heading structure — are part of our standard build process. Request a free website health check to identify accessibility issues on your current site, or get in touch to discuss an accessibility audit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the WCAG standard apply to my small business website?
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is a technical standard developed by the W3C — it’s the reference point that Australian courts and the Human Rights Commission use when assessing DDA complaints about websites. Government websites are mandated to meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA. Private sector businesses aren’t mandated to meet a specific standard, but demonstrating reasonable effort toward WCAG compliance is the best defence against a DDA complaint. For most small businesses, targeting the core WCAG Level A requirements — the most basic accessibility provisions — is a practical and legally sensible starting point.
Does accessibility affect SEO?
Yes — many accessibility improvements directly overlap with SEO best practice. Alt text on images improves both accessibility (for screen readers) and SEO (Google reads alt text as part of its image understanding). Semantic heading structure (proper H1, H2, H3 hierarchy) benefits both screen reader navigation and search engine content understanding. Descriptive link text (“learn more about our plumbing services” rather than “click here”) benefits both usability and keyword relevance signals. Improving accessibility rarely hurts SEO and often meaningfully helps it.
How do I check if my website has accessibility problems?
WAVE (wave.webaim.org) is a free browser extension that analyses any web page for accessibility errors and alerts — colour contrast failures, missing alt text, form labelling problems, and more. Google Lighthouse (built into Chrome’s developer tools) includes an accessibility audit alongside performance, SEO, and best practices scores. These tools identify the most common and significant accessibility problems without requiring specialist expertise to run.
Is making my website accessible expensive?
For common fixes on an existing WordPress site — adding alt text to images, improving colour contrast, fixing form labels — the effort is manageable and doesn’t require significant development work. For more complex accessibility requirements — keyboard navigation on custom components, comprehensive ARIA implementation — the effort increases. For new website builds, building accessibility in from the start costs less than retrofitting it onto a completed build. As with most website quality considerations, it’s cheaper to build right than to fix later.
Should I add an accessibility statement to my website?
Yes — an accessibility statement that describes your website’s current level of accessibility, any known limitations, the standard you’re targeting, and a contact method for accessibility-related feedback demonstrates good faith and provides a clear mechanism for users to report issues. It also documents your commitment to accessibility for any future DDA-related discussions. The W3C provides a free accessibility statement generator at www.w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/ that produces a customisable statement appropriate for an Australian small business website.
Does website accessibility apply to my social media content?
Social media platforms have their own accessibility features — alt text for images on Instagram and Twitter/X, auto-captions on video platforms — that content creators can use. The DDA’s application to social media content is less clearly defined than to websites, but applying accessibility principles to social media content (adding image descriptions, captioning videos, using sufficient colour contrast in graphics) is both best practice and increasingly expected by audiences and regulators. The same principles apply: content that can be consumed by the broadest possible audience serves more people and reduces legal risk.
