A practical website accessibility check for small businesses

Choose one task that matters commercially: find opening hours, request a quote, book a table, reserve an appointment, buy a product, or send an enquiry. Start on the page where a new customer would arrive and continue until the confirmation. Include the home page, the relevant service or product page, the form, and the success or error message.

Use the version customers actually use. A Mallorca activity company might test its English booking path as well as Spanish; a Swedish consultant might follow the route from a service page to an offert request. Write down the device, browser, language, and pages tested so another person can repeat the review.

Click the address bar, then navigate with Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, Space, and arrow keys. W3C recommends checking that every link, button, field, menu, and media control can be reached, that focus moves in a sensible order, and that the current item has a visible outline or highlight.

A serious blocker is a keyboard trap: focus enters a menu, pop-up, date picker, or cookie notice and cannot leave. Also note skipped controls, an invisible focus marker, or a “Book now” element that works only with a mouse. Record the exact page and step rather than writing “keyboard does not work”.

Read the page at normal size, then zoom the browser to 200%. Important text and controls should remain available without overlapping, disappearing, or forcing awkward sideways scrolling. Do not treat mobile view as the only check: zoom helps people with low vision on a laptop too.

Look for pale text, colour-only instructions, vague links such as “click here”, and headings chosen for appearance. Customers should understand the page by scanning its headings. “Request a site visit” is clearer than “Submit”. Contrast tools help, but the real design still needs human review.

W3C says informative images need text alternatives that convey their essential information. A photo of a holiday apartment might need to identify the accessible entrance shown; a product image used as a link needs to describe the destination or action. Decorative flourishes should normally have empty alternative text so a screen reader can skip them.

Contact, quote, booking, and checkout forms can turn a barrier into a lost conversation. Every field needs a clear label, required information cannot rely on red alone, and examples should explain local date, telephone, postcode, or decimal formats where needed.

Submit the form empty, enter an invalid email address, and then correct it. W3C advises that error messages be concise, easy to find, and specific about how to fix the problem. Check that correctly entered data remains in place and that a visible confirmation explains what happens next. Repeat the whole task with the keyboard.

On a small screen, check whether buttons are easy to tap, text can be enlarged, menus open and close, and sticky banners do not cover the next action. Rotate the device and try the journey with a slow connection if possible. A technically present control is not useful when it sits behind a consent banner.

Review each maintained language as its own customer experience. German labels are often longer than English ones; Spanish address fields and Scandinavian terminology may need different space or explanation. Check page language, headings, form labels, errors, image alternatives, and confirmation text—not just the main paragraphs.

Create a small table with page, task, barrier, who is affected, severity, owner, and target date. Fix blockers in high-value journeys first: an unreachable booking button matters more than a decorative icon with an imperfect description. Next address repeated problems in navigation, forms, templates, and shared components because one repair can improve many pages.

For example, a guesthouse finds that its date picker cannot be used by keyboard, error text is pale, and room photographs lack descriptions. It first makes booking and errors usable, then improves the shared room template. The order follows customer impact.

Retest the main journey after every navigation, form, booking-tool, consent-banner, or design change. Add keyboard use, zoom, image text, field labels, errors, and mobile checks to the publishing checklist. Ask real users for feedback and give them an accessible way to report a problem.

W3C is explicit that no automated tool alone can decide whether a website is accessible. Combine quick checks, automated scanning, human testing, and specialist evaluation when the risk or service calls for it. Accessibility then becomes practical quality control.