Web accessibility means building sites that people with disabilities — visual, motor, auditory, cognitive — can actually use. It's sometimes framed purely as a legal requirement (and lawsuits under the ADA over inaccessible websites have become more common), but in practice, accessible design tends to just be better design, full stop.
Who this actually affects
More than a billion people worldwide live with some form of disability, and the number who benefit from accessible design is larger still — think of someone with a temporary injury, someone in bright sunlight who can't see low-contrast text, or someone trying to navigate a site one-handed while holding a coffee. Accessibility isn't a narrow edge case.
Where most sites actually fail
- Missing alt text on images. Screen readers rely on alt text to describe images to visitors who can't see them. Without it, a screen reader user just hears "image" — no information at all.
- Low color contrast. Light gray text on a white background looks stylish and reads as nearly invisible to many visitors, not only those with low vision.
- Keyboard traps. Not everyone uses a mouse or touchscreen. If every button, link, and form field can't be reached and activated using only a keyboard, part of your site is simply unusable for some visitors.
- Unlabeled form fields. A form field that only makes sense visually — a box with no associated label a screen reader can announce — leaves those visitors guessing what to type.
- Video without captions. Auto-captioning tools have made this dramatically easier than it used to be, and there's little excuse left to skip it.
The standard to aim for
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), currently at version 2.2, are the widely recognized standard, with "Level AA" as the commonly targeted bar for businesses. You don't need to memorize the spec — a good developer builds toward it as a matter of course, and automated tools (like axe or WAVE) can catch a large share of common issues in minutes.
The bottom line
Accessible design isn't a separate, optional layer bolted onto a "real" website — it's a core part of building one well. It expands who can actually use your site, reduces legal risk, and in most cases costs little to nothing extra when it's planned for from the start rather than patched in later.