A website that only serves some of your potential customers is a broken website. In 2026, accessibility in web design is no longer a niche concern or a “nice-to-have” feature. It is a fundamental requirement for any serious business. If your site isn’t built to be accessible for everyone, you are not just failing a significant portion of the population. You are actively turning away customers and exposing your business to legal risks.
Accessibility means designing your digital presence so that everyone, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities, can use it. This includes people with visual impairments using screen readers, individuals who cannot use a mouse, and those with hearing loss who rely on captions.
For a business in Sacramento, making your website accessible is about more than just compliance. It’s a statement that you are an inclusive part of the community, open and welcoming to every single resident. This guide cuts through the technical jargon to give you a no-BS look at why accessibility matters and what you need to do about it.
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What is Website Accessibility, Really?
At its core, web accessibility is about making sure your website is Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR) for all users. These four principles are the foundation of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which have become the global standard.
Let’s break that down without the fluff:
- Perceivable: Can users see and hear your content? This means providing text alternatives for images (alt text), captions for videos, and ensuring enough color contrast so text is readable.
- Operable: Can users navigate your site? This involves making sure your entire website can be used with a keyboard alone, without requiring a mouse. It also means giving users enough time to read content and avoiding design elements that could cause seizures.
- Understandable: Is your content clear and easy to follow? This means using plain language, providing clear instructions for forms, and creating a predictable, consistent navigation structure.
- Robust: Can your site be used by a wide range of technologies? This ensures your website works well with assistive technologies like screen readers and will remain accessible as technology evolves.
Following these principles is not about limiting creativity; it’s about practicing thoughtful, user-centric design.
The Undeniable Benefits of an Web Accessibility
Investing in website accessibility isn’t just an act of corporate social responsibility. It delivers tangible returns for your business.
1. Expand Your Market Reach
Over one in four adults in the United States lives with a disability (CDC: Disability Impacts All of Us). In California, that’s millions of people. If your website is inaccessible, you are telling a massive segment of the market that their business is not welcome. An accessible site broadens your audience, allowing you to connect with customers your competitors are ignoring.
2. Boost Your SEO Performance
The practices that make a website accessible are the same ones that search engines love. Things like proper heading structures, descriptive alt text on images, and video transcripts give Google more context to understand and rank your content. A clean, well-structured, accessible site almost always performs better in search results.
Want more on how website accessibility impacts SEO? See Google’s Web Accessibility and SEO Guide.
3. Enhance the User Experience for Everyone
Good accessibility is good design. A website with high color contrast is easier for everyone to read in bright sunlight. A site that’s navigable by keyboard is a better experience for power users. Clear, simple forms reduce frustration and increase conversions for all customers. By designing for the margins, you improve the experience for the mainstream.
4. Mitigate Legal Risk
Website accessibility lawsuits are on the rise, and they aren’t just targeting large corporations anymore. Small and mid-sized businesses are increasingly being sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for having inaccessible websites. The Department of Justice provides guidance on website accessibility and the ADA. Investing in accessibility is a proactive measure to protect your business from costly legal battles and demand letters.
Common Accessibility Mistakes We See Every Day
Many websites fail on accessibility not out of malice, but out of ignorance. Here are some of the most frequent and easily fixable mistakes made by businesses in the Sacramento area.
No Captions on Videos: If you use video content to market your business—and you should—it must have accurate, synchronized captions for users who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Poor Color Contrast: Using light gray text on a white background is a common design trend, but it fails accessibility tests. Text must have sufficient contrast to be readable for people with low vision.
Missing or Vague Alt Text: Every meaningful image needs descriptive alt text so users with screen readers understand its content. “Image1.jpg” is useless. “A BS Creative Co. designer sketching a new logo on a tablet” is useful.
No Keyboard Navigation: Try to navigate your own website using only the “Tab” key. Can you access every link, button, and form field in a logical order? If not, your site is broken for users who cannot operate a mouse.
Unlabeled Form Fields: Forms that use placeholder text as labels disappear once the user starts typing, creating confusion. Every form field needs a permanent, visible label.
How to Improve Your Website’s Accessibility
You don’t need to be a developer to start making improvements to accessibility in web design. Here are practical steps you can take right now.
1. Run an Automated Audit
Use a free tool like WAVE or Google’s Lighthouse (built into the Chrome browser) to get an instant report on your site’s most glaring accessibility issues. This will give you a clear, prioritized checklist of what to fix.
2. Review Your Content and Colors
Go through your website. Is your text easy to read? Use a contrast checker tool to test your brand’s color palette. Ensure your links are not just identified by color alone; they should also be underlined or bolded.
3. Prioritize Your Most Important Pages
Start with the pages that matter most: your homepage, contact page, and primary service or product pages. Fix the accessibility issues here first to make the biggest impact on your core user journeys.
4. Involve Real Users
The best way to know if your site is accessible is to watch it in action. This will reveal usability issues that automated tools can never catch.
Interested in making your site truly inclusive? Book a web accessibility audit with Sacramento’s local experts.
Accessibility in Web Design Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. While the ADA doesn’t explicitly mention websites, U.S. courts have consistently ruled that commercial websites are “places of public accommodation” and must be accessible. Ignoring accessibility opens your business to potential lawsuits.
Absolutely not. This is a common myth. Accessibility does not mean your site has to be boring or ugly. It’s a set of constraints that, like any design constraint, can foster greater creativity. It is entirely possible to have a beautiful, modern, and fully accessible website.
The cost varies. It’s most cost-effective to build accessibility in from the start of a new web design project. Remediating an existing site can be more expensive, depending on its complexity and the number of issues. However, the cost of an audit and remediation is almost always less than the cost of a lawsuit.
Website Accessibility Is Not a Project; It’s a Practice
Building an accessible website is not a one-and-done task. It’s an ongoing commitment to inclusive design that must be integrated into your process every time you update your site or create new content.
Your website is your digital front door. Ensuring it’s open to everyone is not only the right thing to do—it’s the smart thing to do. An accessible website is more user-friendly, has better SEO, and reaches a wider audience. It positions your brand as a modern, responsible, and forward-thinking leader in the Sacramento community.
At BS Creative Co., we build websites that deliver results, and that means building them for everyone. We believe accessibility in web design is essential. There’s no BS, no compromises.
Ready to find out if your website is truly serving all your potential customers?