Website Accessibility for Small Businesses: A Practical Starting Point

Some of the people trying to use your website can’t see it well, can’t use a mouse, or can’t hear the video on your homepage. If the site isn’t built with them in mind, they can’t book, buy or call, and they go somewhere else.

The good news for a small business is that most accessibility work is ordinary good practice, and much of it makes the site better for every visitor.

What does accessible actually mean?

The standard most people point to is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), published by the W3C. The current version is WCAG 2.2, and level AA is the common target for business websites. You can read the full WCAG 2.2 quick reference on the W3C site, but it’s long and technical.

The guidelines are organized around four principles. Your site should be:

• Perceivable: people can see or hear the content, or get it another way. Images have text alternatives; videos have captions.
• Operable: people can use it with a keyboard, a screen reader or a switch device, not only a mouse or a fingertip.
• Understandable: text is clear, navigation is predictable, and forms explain what went wrong.
• Robust: the code is clean enough that screen readers and other assistive technology can interpret it correctly.

You don’t need to memorize the success criteria. You need a site that someone can use without seeing the screen, without a mouse, and without perfect vision.

What about the law?

We’re web designers, not lawyers, so we won’t tell you what the law requires of your business. In the US, accessibility claims against business websites do happen, and the rules and how courts apply them can vary depending on your business and where you operate. If you’re worried about legal exposure, talk to an attorney.

What we can say is that building toward WCAG 2.2 AA is a sensible, widely recognized goal, and the fixes below are worth making regardless.

Which accessibility fixes should you make first?

These are common problems on local business sites, and most are straightforward to fix.

Write real alt text for images

Alt text is a short description that screen readers read aloud in place of an image.

• Do: “Guests on a jeep tour stopped at a red rock overlook.”
• Not this: “IMG_4471.jpg” or “jeep tour sedona best jeep tour sedona az.”

Decorative images that add no information, like a background texture, should have empty alt text so screen readers skip them. If a photo of your storefront helps someone recognize it when they arrive, describe it. Alt text belongs in your routine for preparing photos for the web. AI tools can draft it, but a person needs to check every description; we cover where that line sits in how AI can help your website.

Check your color contrast

Light gray text on a white background, or white text over a busy photo, is hard for many people to read, and it’s even harder on a phone in bright Arizona sun. WCAG AA asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal body text and 3:1 for large text. A free contrast checker will tell you in seconds whether your colors pass.

Make every link and button make sense on its own

Screen reader users often jump from link to link. A page full of “Click here” and “Read more” tells them nothing.

• Do: “See our private tour options.”
• Not this: “Click here.”

Use headings in order

Headings aren’t just bigger text. They give the page an outline that screen reader users navigate by. Use one main heading per page, then sections and subsections in order, rather than picking a heading level because you like its size.

Make sure the site works with a keyboard

Press Tab repeatedly through your homepage. You should be able to reach every link, button and form field, see clearly where you are at each step, and open the menu without a mouse. If the focus outline disappears or gets hidden behind a sticky header, that’s a problem. WCAG 2.2 added a specific requirement that focused items not be completely hidden by things like sticky headers and cookie banners.

Label your form fields

Every field in your contact or booking form needs a visible label, not just placeholder text that vanishes when someone starts typing. Error messages should say what’s wrong and how to fix it, such as “Please enter a phone number,” not just turn the field red. Our mobile checklist has more on forms that are easy to fill in on a phone.

Give tap targets enough room

WCAG 2.2 introduced a minimum target size at level AA: interactive targets should generally be at least 24 by 24 CSS pixels, or have enough space around them. Tiny social icons crammed together in a footer are a common failure. Bigger, well-spaced buttons help people with limited dexterity, and everyone using a phone on a bumpy shuttle ride.

Caption your videos

If you have a video tour of your gallery or retreat, add captions. Many platforms can generate them automatically, but review them, because automatic captions often mangle local names. Captions also help anyone watching with the sound off.

Don’t put important text inside images

A flyer graphic with your holiday hours baked into the image can’t be read by screen readers, can’t be resized cleanly, and isn’t searchable. Put the text on the page as text. The same goes for PDF menus and price lists; as our restaurant guide puts it, put your menu on the page, not in a PDF.

How do you test your website for accessibility?

Automated tools can’t catch everything, but they find a lot. Then a few manual checks cover what they miss.

Check	How to do it	What it’s good at
WAVE (from WebAIM)	Free browser extension	Flags missing alt text, contrast errors, empty links and heading problems right on the page
Lighthouse	Built into Chrome’s developer tools	A quick list of accessibility issues alongside performance
axe DevTools (from Deque)	Browser extension many developers use	Detailed, developer-friendly issue reports
Keyboard test	Tab through the page with no mouse	Focus visibility, menus and widgets that trap or skip you
Zoom test	Zoom the browser to 200%	Text that gets cut off or overlaps
Screen reader test	VoiceOver (iPhone, Mac) or TalkBack (Android)	Whether someone can actually find your phone number and book

An automated score is a starting point, not a certificate. A page can pass every automated check and still be confusing to use. Adding a quick scan to your quarterly website maintenance catches new problems as pages and images are added.

How does accessibility help every visitor?

Many accessibility fixes make your site better for visitors without any disability:

• Good contrast helps people reading outdoors.
• Captions help people in a quiet hotel room or a noisy tasting room.
• Clear labels and error messages reduce abandoned booking forms.
• Clean headings and descriptive links help search engines understand your pages too.
• Larger tap targets help everyone on a phone, which is how many visitors find Sedona businesses. Our mobile-friendly website checklist covers more of that.

When do you need a developer or a vendor?

Some issues, like a menu that can’t be opened by keyboard or a booking widget that traps focus, live in the theme or third-party code. You can’t fix those from your page editor.

• Theme problems: ask your developer to fix the template, not patch individual pages.
• Booking, chat and payment widgets: ask the vendor which accessibility standard they support and how they test it.
• Overlay products that promise one-click compliance can’t repair the underlying code. Fix the site itself.

Accessibility is also part of why design and development both matter: a site that looks good but is built carelessly is often where these problems start. When we design a new site, we build toward WCAG 2.2 AA from the start, and website care can keep new pages and images from slipping backward.