What Is Web Accessibility? Building Services Everyone Can Use

Web accessibility means building web services that anyone can use, whether or not they have a disability and whatever their situation. It keeps everyone in mind: people who have trouble seeing the screen, people who find a mouse hard to use, even people who can’t hear sound.

It’s easy to think of accessibility as a courtesy for a small minority, but in reality it’s about taking in more users, and it’s a matter of quality. In this post, I’ll unpack, without any code, what web accessibility is and why it matters.

Accessibility is lowering the threshold for everyone #

Picture the ramp at a building’s entrance. The ramp was built for people who use wheelchairs, but it helps just as much for someone dragging heavy luggage or pushing a stroller. A threshold lowered for one person ends up making things easier for everyone.

Web accessibility follows the same idea. When you refine a screen for a particular user, that improvement carries over to many other users as well. Caring about accessibility isn’t special treatment for a few; it’s lowering the threshold so more people can use the service without strain.

People who can’t see the screen use the web too #

People who have trouble seeing the screen use the web with a tool called a screen reader, a program that reads the screen’s content aloud. But a screen reader can’t understand an image itself. So if an image has no alt text describing what it shows, that part is simply skipped or read out meaninglessly.

The screen’s structure matters too. Headings and body text, buttons and links have to be marked according to their kind so the screen reader can announce “this is a heading, this is a button.” Even when a single bold line looks enough to the eye, when heard aloud it has to be clear whether it’s a heading or not.

It has to be usable without a mouse #

People who can’t use their hands freely operate the web with the keyboard alone instead of a mouse. They usually move between buttons and links with the Tab key. So if a menu can only be triggered by a mouse, keyboard users can’t reach that function. It means everything has to be reachable without a mouse.

The same goes for color. Plenty of people have trouble telling red from green. So if you convey information by color alone — “red text means an error” — some people can’t read that distinction. The rule of thumb is to signal it with text or a symbol alongside the color, and to keep enough contrast between text and background.

Accessibility isn’t optional, it’s quality #

When you handle accessibility well, everyone’s experience improves with it. Captions added to a video are useful not only for people who have trouble hearing, but also for people on a noisy subway or in a situation where they can’t turn the sound on. Alt text on an image also helps a search engine understand what the picture shows, which is good for search too.

On top of that, many countries require accessibility by law for services above a certain size. In other words, accessibility isn’t a nice-to-have extra; it’s closer to the basic quality a service should have.

How to check #

You can do basic checks without any elaborate equipment. Set the mouse aside for a moment and try using the main features all the way through with the keyboard alone, and where you get stuck quickly becomes clear. Whether each image carries alt text, and whether the contrast between text and background is sufficient, you can also confirm by eye.

There are also many tools that automatically find accessibility problems. If you fold these checks into the pre-release testing process, you can keep up with accessibility routinely instead of fixing it all in a rush later.

Why this makes work easier for non-developers #

• You reflect it at the planning stage. Keeping keyboard use and color contrast in mind from the moment you design a screen reduces big rework later.
• You create content correctly. Knowing why it’s necessary to add alt text to images and captions to videos, you naturally take care of it when making writing or video.
• You know the legal risk. Knowing that accessibility is sometimes an obligation rather than a recommendation, you can gauge in advance the risk the service would take on.

Wrapping up #

Today we looked at how web accessibility is about building services anyone can use, whether or not they have a disability, and how it’s ultimately a matter of quality that lifts everyone’s experience. Alt text for screen readers, a structure reachable with the keyboard alone, and signals that don’t rely on color alone are the starting points.

If you’re curious what pieces make up a web screen, read What Is a Website Made Of; if you’re curious where these checks fit in before release, read Testing, QA, and Staging.