Accessibility usually gets raised as a compliance worry, which is a shame, because it buries the more interesting fact: most of the benefit comes from a handful of changes that make the site better for everybody and cost close to nothing to implement.
Who this actually affects
It's a much broader group than most people picture. Someone with a permanent vision impairment, yes — and also someone with a broken wrist using one hand, someone reading a phone in bright sunlight, someone whose first language isn't English, someone on a train with a patchy connection, and everyone over about forty-five squinting at small grey text. Design for the edges and the middle gets better too.
The changes with the best return
1. Contrast that actually passes
Light grey text on white is the single most common failure we see, and it's usually a deliberate design choice. Body text needs a 4.5:1 ratio against its background; large text needs 3:1. This is measurable, not a matter of taste — check it rather than eyeballing it. Fixing it helps everyone, in every lighting condition.
2. Real alt text on images that carry meaning
Describe what the image conveys, not what it depicts. A photo of a completed bathroom on a renovation page is "renovated bathroom with walk-in shower and floor-to-ceiling tiling", not "IMG_4471". Purely decorative images should have an empty alt attribute so screen readers skip them rather than reading a filename aloud.
3. Labels on form fields
Placeholder text is not a label. It vanishes the moment someone starts typing, which is exactly when they need it, and it usually fails contrast. Every field needs a real <label>. This also makes browser autofill work properly, which improves completion rates for everybody.
4. A visible focus indicator
Tab through your site. If you can't see where you are, neither can anyone navigating by keyboard. Removing the focus outline because it looked untidy is a very common and very damaging choice — style it instead of deleting it.
5. Headings in a sensible order
One h1, then h2 for sections, h3 beneath those. Don't pick heading levels for their font size. Screen reader users navigate by heading the way sighted users skim — a broken hierarchy removes the ability to skim at all.
6. Link text that means something on its own
"Read more" repeated eleven times is useless when the links are listed out of context. "Read our pre-launch checklist" works everywhere.
Where it also helps you commercially
Nearly everything above overlaps with things search engines reward: proper heading structure, descriptive links, real alt text, fast and usable pages. It isn't a coincidence — both are ultimately about whether the page can be understood without seeing it.
Start here
Pick three: contrast, form labels, focus indicators. They're the cheapest and they cover a lot of ground. Then tab through your own site once from top to bottom without touching the mouse — it takes five minutes and it's more revealing than any automated tool.
Automated checkers are worth running, but they only catch a portion of the real problems. The keyboard test finds the ones that actually stop somebody using your site.
Every site we build is accessible by default, not as an afterthought.
How we build →