I've been paying attention to web accessibility for years.
Alt text on images. Readable font sizes. Color contrast that doesn't make text disappear into the background. Buttons that are big enough to tap on a phone. These are things I harp on with my own sites and with clients.
And I also kind of gave up on the bigger picture.
Because getting fully compliant felt like a moving target.
There's a whole industry built around accessibility. Sometimes it feels impossible without expensive consulting and specialized certifications.
The tools marketed as "making your site instantly compliant" ended up in lawsuits.
The platforms and themes most small business owners use can have code-level issues that are genuinely beyond what you can fix yourself.
And for a long time, the guidelines were guidelines, but not really enforceable in most situations.
So I focused on the basics and let the rest go.
But something's shifted, and I want to give you a heads-up.
Before we go further: I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a certified accessibility specialist. Nothing in this post is legal advice. It's practical information based on my own experience. If you have questions about your specific legal obligations, please talk to a qualified attorney.
What's Changed in Website Accessibility
WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, has been the standard reference for web accessibility for years.
But it's increasingly being used as the basis for lawsuits targeting small business websites, in ways it wasn't before.
I'm not going to tell you what your legal risk is. That depends on your business type, your location, your audience, and factors I'm not qualified to assess.
What I can tell you is that it's worth paying attention in a way that maybe felt less urgent a few years ago.
If you want the legal context explained well and in plain language, this Instagram post from @theboutiquelawyer is a good place to start:
She covers the legal side in a way I can't and shouldn't.
What You Can Control (And What You Can't)
This is worth naming before we get into tools, because it affects how you think about all of this.
Some of what makes a website non-compliant lives in the platform, theme, or page builder you're using.
From the underlying code to how a Squarespace template handles color contrast, even how a Shopify theme structures its headings or how a page builder outputs HTML - all of these are things you may not even realize.
Depending on your platform, you may be able to adjust some of it, but some of it is outside what most small business owners can directly change.
What you can control: the content decisions you make. The alt text you write (or don't write) on images. The headings you choose. The colors you pick for text and backgrounds. Whether you have an accessibility statement.
Those are yours regardless of the platform.
One important thing I want to be clear about: having less control over something doesn't necessarily mean less legal responsibility for it.
If your platform has accessibility issues in its code, that may or may not affect your liability, and I genuinely don't know the answer to that.
It depends on your situation and it's a legal question, not a practical one. That's the kind of thing worth getting legal advice specific to your situation for.
The tools below focus on what you can actually do. That's the scope of this post.
1. Run a Free Accessibility Scan
The easiest starting point is WAVE (wave.webaim.org), a free scanner that shows you accessibility issues on your page.
Enter your URL and you get a breakdown of errors, warnings, and structural issues — things like missing alt text, form fields without labels, and contrast problems. It won't catch everything, and some of what it finds will be platform-level issues you can't fix. But it gives you a real picture, fast.
I run it on my sites periodically. as a check-in.
What you can do: Run your homepage. Then run a page with a lot of content. Focus on errors (red flags) before warnings.
For each error, ask yourself: is this something I can fix, or is it coming from the platform? Fix what you can. Note what you can't.
2. Check Your Heading Structure
Headings aren't just visual formatting. Screen readers use them to navigate, the way sighted users scan a page visually.
The rule: headings should work like a high school outline. One H1 per page (your main title). H2 for main sections. H3 for sub-points within those sections.
Don't skip levels. Don't use headings just to make text look bigger.
There's a free heading checker at seoreviewtools.com/html-headings-checker/ that shows you exactly what heading structure any page has.
I found a heading hierarchy issue on my own site this week while writing this post, an H1 jumping straight to H3. The exact thing this tool catches.
What you can do: Run the heading checker on your main pages. Look for skipped levels or headings that seem off. This one is usually yours to fix, it's a content decision, not a platform one.
3. Check Your Colors, Two Ways
Two tools, for two different situations.
When you're planning or choosing colors for text and backgrounds: Use accessible-colors.com. It checks whether your combination meets contrast requirements, and if it doesn't, it shows you alternatives that do. Use this when you're making color decisions, before you finalize anything.
When you want to see what your site looks like to people with color blindness: Use the filter from Toptal (toptal.com/designers/colorfilter). Enter your URL and see how it looks across different types of color blindness. Worth checking that your buttons, links, and sections are distinguishable, not just by color, but by contrast and shape.
What you can do: Run your current text and background colors through the accessible colors tools. Then look at your site through the color blindness filter. See if anything important disappears.
4. Get an Accessibility Statement on Your Site
An accessibility statement tells visitors what you've done to make your site accessible, what you're still working on, and how to reach you if they hit a problem.
I'm not going to tell you whether you're required to have one because that's a legal question that depends on your situation. What I will say is that it's a good-faith step that documents your effort, and it's much easier to put together than it sounds.
There's a free generator at w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/generator that walks you through it. You answer questions about what you've done and it produces a draft. I used it for my own site this week. It took about 20 minutes.
What you can do: Go through the generator and add it to your site.
In Case You Skimmed (no shade):
- The legal landscape around accessibility is shifting, so it's worth paying attention, worth talking to a lawyer if you have specific concerns
- A lot of non-compliance lives in platform or theme code you can't directly change, but limited control doesn't automatically mean limited legal liability. That's a legal question.
- **WAVE** (wave.webaim.org) - free scanner, run it on your main pages, fix what you can
- **Heading checker** (seoreviewtools.com/html-headings-checker/) - check your heading hierarchy, no skipped levels
- **Color contrast** (accessible-colors.com) - check text and background combinations when planning colors
- **Color blindness filter** (toptal.com/designers/colorfilter) - see your site through different eyes, especially during redesigns
- **Accessibility statement generator** (w3.org/WAI/planning/statements/generator) - document your good-faith effort
- **@theboutiquelawyer on Instagram** (https://www.instagram.com/p/DXK2wAwkYV0/?img_index=1) - a helpful post
Where to Start With Accessibility
Run WAVE on your homepage.
See what comes up. Don't try to fix everything. Pick one thing you can do, like an image missing alt text, a heading level out of order, or a color combination that doesn't pass contrast. Fix that one thing.
Then come back and do one more.
That's the approach I'm taking. It's not comprehensive. It's a direction, maintained over time.
If you'd like to talk about the website implementation of some of these things, or you want a hand, you can book a consult or a done-with-you session here: Website Consult
Reminder: I'm not a lawyer and nothing in this post is legal advice. Web accessibility obligations vary based on your business type, location, and situation. When in doubt, talk to a qualified attorney.
