Why Small Businesses Need to Prioritise Website Accessibility in 2025

Website accessibility means making sure your website can be used by everyone, including people who are blind or have low vision, people who are deaf or hard of hearing, people with limited movement who cannot use a mouse, and people with cognitive or learning disabilities. Around one in five Australians lives with some form of disability, and many more have temporary or age-related difficulties with small text, low contrast or fiddly menus.

For small businesses on the Sunshine Coast and Bribie Island, an accessible website is not just the right thing to do. It reaches more customers, reduces legal risk, and tends to perform better in Google. This article explains what accessibility involves and the practical steps that make the biggest difference.

The legal and social pressure for inclusive websites

In Australia, the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with disability in the provision of goods and services, and the Australian Human Rights Commission has made it clear this applies to websites. The recognised benchmark is the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), with Level AA being the usual target.

Customers also expect it. A website that cannot be used with a screen reader, or that is impossible to navigate on a phone with larger text settings, simply loses those visitors to a competitor.

What makes a website accessible?

WCAG is built around four principles. Content should be:

  • Perceivable – people can see or hear it, for example images have text descriptions and videos have captions.
  • Operable – people can use it, for example every menu and button works with a keyboard.
  • Understandable – the content and navigation are clear and predictable.
  • Robust – it works with different browsers, devices and assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Collection of web accessibility icons for inclusive website designAccessibility features that also improve SEO

Many accessibility improvements are the same things Google uses to understand and rank a page:

  • Descriptive alt text on images. Screen readers read it out, and Google uses it to understand the image.
  • A clear heading structure. One main heading, then logical subheadings. This helps screen reader users jump between sections and helps search engines understand the page.
  • Meaningful link text. “View our hosting packages” instead of “click here”.
  • Good colour contrast. Text that is easy to read for everyone, especially outdoors on a phone.
  • Mobile-friendly, responsive layouts. Text that can be enlarged without breaking the page.
  • Fast loading. Important for people on slow connections and for Google’s page experience signals.
  • Captions and transcripts. Make video content usable for deaf visitors and give Google text to index.

Accessible sites usually have lower bounce rates and longer visits, because they are simply easier to use. That fits with Google’s focus on people-first content, covered in Google’s Helpful Content Update: What It Means for Local Web Design.

Common accessibility problems on small business sites

  • Images of text, such as specials or menus uploaded as a picture, which screen readers cannot read
  • Light grey text on white backgrounds
  • Contact forms without proper labels, or with error messages shown only in red
  • Pop-ups that cannot be closed with a keyboard
  • Sliders and animations that move too quickly and cannot be paused
  • PDF price lists or brochures that are not accessible
  • Links that just say “read more” or “click here”

A quick accessibility check you can do yourself

  1. Put the mouse away. Try to use your website with only the Tab, Enter and arrow keys. Can you reach every menu item and button? Can you see where you are?
  2. Zoom in to 200%. Does the text still fit, or do things overlap and disappear?
  3. Check your images. Do your important images have alt text that describes them?
  4. Look at your headings. Do they make sense as an outline of the page?
  5. Try a free checker. Tools such as WAVE or Google Lighthouse will flag many common issues.

Automated tools only catch part of the picture, but they are a good start.

Accessibility, security and AI

Accessibility works best as part of a well-built website, alongside good security and sensible use of modern tools. AI can help find missing alt text or contrast issues, but a person still needs to check the results make sense. See How AI Tools Are Changing Web Design and Why Cybersecurity Must Be Part of Your Web Design Strategy.

How Wayne’s Web World can help

We build WordPress and Elementor websites with accessibility in mind from the start: clear structure, readable fonts and colours, proper headings, labelled forms, alt text on images and layouts that work on every screen size. We can also review your existing website and fix the most important issues.

See our website design services and prices, or get a quote for an accessible website for your business.