Creating an accessible website for your purpose-led or creative business

Did you know that as a business with a website, you're legally required to make this accessible to all users?

Yep, just like public buildings have a legal requirement to be accessible to anyone who wants to visit them, your website is exactly the same. It falls under UK legislation such as the Euqality Act 2010, which requires anyone who operates in the digital space to have a website that functions for all users, no matter their permanent or temporary disabilities.

Permanent and temporary disabilities covers things such as audio and visual impairments, cognitive impairments, and people who are neurodiverse.

This may surprise you, and can feel a bit daunting. After all, it's not something that's discussed much, and it can feel like a monumental task to add to your never-ending to-do list.

The good news, however, is that making your creative or purpose-led business website accessible isn't something you need a massive budget or oodles of tech know-how for. It's not that tricky to implement steps that will make using it a much better experience for all users.

All you need is a willingness to do it (which I would hope all creative and purpose-led businesses would have), and a few hours of your time to research and implement any changes.

Overall, it's a win-win situation – making sure that anyone who wants to engage with your business online can do so in a way that works for them. And can lead to more business for you!

As a copy and content writer who works with creative and purpose-led businesses, I'm committed to helping my clients make their websites as accessible as possible, which is why I wrote this post to share best practice. I'd like to caveat this with a statement that I am definitely not an accessibility expert, and it's something I'm always learning more about. If you read this post and think there's something I've missed out or got wrong, please get in touch with me to discuss it. I'd be very happy to amend any mistakes I've made or update it with the latest best practice.

Five ways you can easily make your creative or purpose-led business website more accessible

1. Check your colour contrast

Pairing some colours makes them extremely hard to read for people with visual and cognitive impairments. A classic example is white writing on a photo, or white writing on a pale background. And any form of yellow font is usually a complete nightmare to read.

Not sure if your colour contrast is good enough? Use this tool to check your colour contrast.

From a branding point of view, it's usually simple enough to find a gradient of your brand colours that works, so you can still keep your visual identity.

2. Set up your hyperlinks properly

It's all too easy to use single words such as 'here' for hyperlinks. But the massive disadvantage of this is that screen readers can't easily understand that they are hyperlinks.

Instead, use a proper sentence for hyperlinks – as I've done above – and it will make the link much more navigable for screen readers. It also clearly shows it's a link to another web page, giving your content more clarity and structure.

3. Use alt text and captions for photos and videos

Alt text is copy that's added to photos that describes what's in the image. By ensuring all your photos have alt text, screen readers can describe what's in them to visually impaired visitors.

On a similar note, captions on videos enables people with audio impairments to understand your content. This also works when people don't like listening to things with the sound up. (Yes, that's me!)

4. Check that your font size is big enough

Often the font size for the body copy (the bigger chunks of text on a website) isn't big enough, which can make reading it really hard. Aim for at least 16 point, and make sure that you've checked both the mobile and the desktop version of your site.

5. Use header tags to structure your page

Each page of your website should be properly structured using header tags (also known as H tags). These are like titles and subtitles on a printed page, there to organise your copy and make sure it can be easily scanned and read by humans and tech alike.

Making sure you've used header tags means that screen readers (a piece of software that converts text and images on your website into voice output or braille) can navigate your site. There's also a second bonus in that proper header tags boost your SEO, so it's definitely something you should be implementing!

If you'd like more info, I've written a blog post about header tags over on my other website that shares more detail about what they are and how you can set them up.

Increasing your creative or purpose-led business website's accessibility

Hopefully this beginner's guide has given you some to-dos that you can easily action for your website that will help make it more accessible. I'd also recommend checking out these .

free accessibility resources. 

If you'd like some help in making your website more accessible either via my in-depth website audit or website editing, I'd love to hear from you. I also offer a free website check that looks at accessibility as well as SEO and user experience.