Check Website Accessibility: Manual Checks and Tools to Use in 2025

Is your website missing out on reaching more people? About 75% of Americans with disabilities use the internet every day. That’s why it’s important to check if your website works well for everyone, including people with disabilities.

Making your website more accessible helps more users, gives a better experience, and keeps your site up to date with legal rules for fair design. Let’s look at what website accessibility means and how to check it easily.

What is Website Accessibility?

Website accessibility means building websites that people of all abilities can use. This includes people with vision problems, hearing loss, limited hand movement, or learning difficulties.
To make your website more accessible, check for things like:

• Good color contrast.
• Text that can be resized.
• Support for screen readers.
• Easy keyboard navigation.
• Big buttons and links.

Every business should make sure their website is easy to use for everyone. This not only helps more people but also brings more visitors to your site.

Types of Accessibility Testing

Accessibility testing should focus on the needs of real users. Make sure to test your site for people with:

• Vision challenges.
• Hearing loss.
• Limited movement.
• Learning or thinking difficulties.

Here are the main ways to test your website:

• Manual Testing: Team members try out the site and note any problems.
• Automated Tools: Use online tools to find and fix issues quickly.
• User Testing: Ask real people with different needs to use the site and give feedback.

These tests help you build a better website that meets legal rules and serves everyone well.

Why Website Accessibility Matters

Accessing your website helps avoid legal issues and follows important standards like the ADA and WCAG. These rules say websites should be easy to see, use, understand, and work with all devices. This isn’t a one-time job; it’s something to check often. But when you do, you help more people.

For example, closed captions help people who are deaf and can also keep kids focused while watching videos. Other useful features include:

• Clear color contrast.
• Keyboard-friendly menus.
• Image alt text.
• Text-to-speech tools.

In the end, an accessible website helps your business grow and shows that you care about all users. It’s the smart thing to do.

How to Check Website Accessibility in 5 Easy Steps

Manually checking a website is a good way to find problems that might stop some users from using it. Here are 5 simple areas to focus on when checking for better accessibility:

1. Turn On Closed Captions for All Videos and Audio:

Closed captions (also called subtitles) are words shown on the screen that match the video or sound. They help people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and also people in noisy places. Captions also help search engines understand your content, which can improve how your site shows up online.

Most video platforms let viewers turn captions on. Make sure this option is available, and watch the video to check that the captions work. If there is only audio, also give a full written version (called a transcript).

2. Add Alt Text to All Images:

Alt text is a short sentence that explains what an image shows. It helps screen readers describe pictures for people who can’t see them. Good alt text is clear and tells the purpose of the image.

For example, the words “Baby the Corgi Puppy” explain what’s in the picture. Alt text also shows up if the image doesn’t load. Free tools can check which images are missing alt text. But tools can’t judge if the text is useful, so it’s important to write it well.

3. Check Color Contrast:

Color contrast means the difference between the colors of text and the background. Good contrast makes it easier to read and reduces eye strain for everyone.

It’s especially important for people with low vision or color blindness. For small text, aim for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1. For big text, 3 to 1 is enough.

Text, buttons, icons, and links should all stand out from the background. Free tools like AudioEye can scan your site and show areas where the contrast needs improvement.

4. Make Sure the Website Works with a Keyboard:

Some people can’t use a mouse and depend on a keyboard to move around a website. That’s why every button, link, and menu should be usable with a keyboard alone. Using just the arrow keys or the Tab key, users should be able to scroll, select, and complete tasks. The website also needs to show clearly which part is selected at any time, for example, by highlighting a menu or form box.

Try using your own website with only a keyboard. See if anything doesn’t work or if some parts are hard to reach. Ask team members to test too and report any issues.

5. Use Heading Styles in the Right Order:

Headings (like H1 to H6) help organize the content on a webpage. They guide the reader through the page and help screen readers do the same for people with vision problems.

Start with one H1 for the page title. Use H2 for main sections and H3 for smaller sections under those. This makes the page easier to read and understand for everyone.

You can check heading styles in your website’s backend or by right-clicking and using “Inspect” on a page. There are also free tools that can show missing or incorrect heading styles.

How to Check ADA Compliance

To make a website easy for everyone to use, we need to follow ADA rules. These rules help make websites more accessible for people with different needs. Along with WCAG, the ADA gives clear steps to build a site that works well for all users.

Not following ADA rules can be expensive. By the end of 2023, over 4,600 lawsuits were filed for websites that didn’t meet ADA standards. Each case cost around $25,000 on average.

To follow ADA rules, we must test the website often. Real users with different needs should help test the site. This helps us make sure the website meets these four main points:

• Perceivable: Everything on the site should be easy to see or hear.
• Operable: Everyone should be able to move around the site and use it.
• Robust: Assistive tools should be able to read and use the content.
• Understandable: All the information should be clear and easy to follow.

To save time, we can also use online tools that help check for accessibility.

Helpful Tools for Testing Accessibility

Many online tools can help us check if our website is accessible. These tools make it easier to find and fix problems, but we should still do manual checks and test with real users. Tools are helpful, but human testing is still very important.

Here are two tools created by UserWay:

Accessibility Scan and Monitor:
This tool checks if a website follows ADA and WCAG rules. It uses AI to scan things like links, images, videos, and form fields to find any problems. To start, we just need to enter the website link and choose the settings. The scan works fast, it can check 15,000 pages in under an hour. It also looks at how the site works on different screen sizes and devices.

AI Accessibility Widget:
This tool helps fix many accessibility issues in real time. It also makes the website easier to use by giving visitors an accessibility menu. The widget supports 57 languages and has a text-to-speech voice tool that works in over 50 languages. To set it up, just enter the website link and traffic info, then follow the steps.

These tools help websites reach more people and can even boost things like click rates, conversions, and user experience.

Start Improving Your Website Today

Making a website accessible is not something we do just once. It is something we need to keep working on. When we improve accessibility, we help more people use our site. We also lower the chance of legal trouble and show that we care about doing the right thing. With tools like Accessibility Scan and Monitor and the AI Accessibility Widget, getting started is now easier than ever.