Websites · 5 min read
Website accessibility for UK small businesses: the plain-English version
Under the Equality Act, a business website counts as a service, so you're expected to make reasonable adjustments for disabled users. In practice that means readable contrast, real text instead of text-in-images, labelled form fields, keyboard navigation, alt text and captions on video. The same fixes improve how search engines and AI answer engines read your site.
By Raja Wahab, Co-founder, Fixby Studios · Updated
The fixes that matter most
- Colour contrast strong enough to read outdoors on a phone.
- Every form field with a visible label, not just placeholder text.
- Alt text describing what an image shows, not a keyword list.
- Headings in order — one H1, then H2s and H3s that reflect the structure.
- Captions or subtitles on video, which also lifts watch time on social.
- A site that works with a keyboard alone, and with pinch-zoom enabled.
Why it pays
Roughly one in five UK adults reports a disability, and a far larger group benefits from clearer contrast and captions. Accessible pages are also cleaner pages, which is precisely what search and AI answer engines prefer to read.
Raja Wahab is co-founder of Fixby Studios, a Huddersfield studio building websites, SEO, social media and business software for small, owner-managed businesses across West Yorkshire.
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