Key Takeaways:
- Nearly 95% of websites have detectable accessibility errors, and the most common ones are surprisingly simple to fix — low color contrast, missing alt text, and unlabeled form fields account for the majority of failures.
- These aren’t just technical problems. Each accessibility mistake excludes potential customers, hurts your search rankings, and creates legal exposure. Over 5,000 ADA website accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2025, with no small business exemption.
- You don’t need to be a developer to check for these issues. Free tools like Google Lighthouse and WAVE can identify most problems in minutes, and the fixes for WordPress sites are straightforward once you know what to look for.
There’s a good chance your website is turning away customers right now and you don’t know it.
Not because of your content. Not because of your pricing. Because of website accessibility mistakes that make your site difficult or impossible to use for a significant portion of your potential audience.
Here’s the scope of the problem: WebAIM’s 2024 analysis of the top one million websites found that 94.8% of homepages had detectable accessibility failures. On average, those sites had 56.8 errors per page. And the most common issues — low contrast text, missing alt text, unlabeled forms — are the kind of things that most business owners have never heard of, let alone checked for.
These aren’t obscure technical problems. They affect real people trying to use your site: a person with low vision who can’t read your light gray text on a white background, a screen reader user who encounters an image with no description, a visitor who can’t tab through your navigation without a mouse.
Roughly 1 in 4 U.S. adults lives with a disability. People with disabilities hold nearly half a trillion dollars in disposable income. And research shows that 69% of consumers with disabilities click away from websites they find difficult to use. Those are customers walking away from your site — not because they aren’t interested, but because your site won’t let them in.
This guide covers the ten most common website accessibility mistakes we see on small business sites, what each one costs you in real terms, and how to fix every one of them — with specific guidance for WordPress sites.
What Website Accessibility Actually Means (And Why You Should Care)
Accessibility in Plain English
Website accessibility means making sure your site can be used by everyone, including people with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive disabilities. It covers things like whether a blind person using a screen reader can understand your content, whether someone who can’t use a mouse can navigate your site with a keyboard, and whether a person with low vision can read your text.
The international standard for web accessibility is called WCAG — Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. WCAG 2.2 AA is the level most regulations reference. It covers specific technical requirements like minimum color contrast ratios, proper heading structures, and descriptive text for images and links.
The Numbers: Who’s Affected and What’s at Stake
About 61 million adults in the United States live with a disability. Globally, the number exceeds 1.3 billion. These aren’t edge cases — they represent a substantial and growing portion of your potential audience.
From a business perspective: people with disabilities and their families, friends, and advocates represent an enormous market. Accessible websites don’t just avoid excluding people — they actively reach an audience that most competitors are leaving on the table.
There’s also an SEO dimension. Many accessibility best practices overlap directly with search engine optimization. Proper heading structure helps both screen readers and Google understand your content. Alt text helps both blind users and image search. Clean code and semantic HTML help both assistive technologies and search crawlers. Fixing accessibility issues frequently improves your search performance as a side effect.
The Legal Reality — ADA Lawsuits Are at an All-Time High
In the first half of 2025, ADA website accessibility lawsuits surged 37% over the prior year, with over 2,000 cases filed in just six months. By year-end, more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed. The average settlement is around $30,000, with defense legal fees of $30,000 to $175,000 on top of that.
There is no small business exemption. The majority of ADA website lawsuits target organizations with under $25 million in annual revenue. And in 2025, the FTC reached a $1 million settlement with accessiBe — a company that sells accessibility overlay widgets — for misleading businesses into believing its product guaranteed ADA compliance.
This isn’t about scare tactics. It’s about understanding that accessibility is both a legal obligation and a business opportunity. The organizations that address it proactively spend far less than those forced to address it reactively.
The 10 Most Common Website Accessibility Mistakes
Mistake #1 — Low Color Contrast (Found on 86% of Websites)
The problem: Text that doesn’t have enough visual contrast against its background. Light gray text on a white background, blue text on a dark blue background, or any combination that makes reading difficult for people with low vision — which includes far more people than you’d think, especially as your audience ages.
What it costs you: Visitors who can’t comfortably read your content leave. This shows up as higher bounce rates and lower time on site — signals that also hurt your search rankings. WCAG 2.2 requires a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
How to fix it: Use WebAIM’s free Contrast Checker (webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker) to test your color combinations. Enter the hex codes for your text color and background color, and the tool tells you instantly whether they pass WCAG standards. For most sites, adjusting text color by a few shades darker is all it takes. At CMA, we test every color combination in our brand palette against WCAG AA standards before any design goes live — our Deep Navy (#0F1328) on Cloud White (#F5F5F5) achieves a 17:1 contrast ratio, well above the requirement.
WordPress fix: If you use Elementor, update the Global Colors and Global Typography settings in your site’s Style panel. This propagates changes across the entire site rather than requiring page-by-page edits.
Mistake #2 — Missing Alt Text on Images (Found on 55% of Websites)
The problem: Images without descriptive alternative text. When a screen reader encounters an image without alt text, it either skips it entirely or reads the file name — which is usually something like “IMG_3847.jpg.” The user has no idea what the image shows.
What it costs you: Screen reader users lose context that sighted users take for granted. If the image conveys important information — a team photo, a service diagram, a before-and-after project image — that information is invisible to anyone relying on assistive technology. Missing alt text also means Google can’t understand your images, which hurts your image SEO and reduces your chances of appearing in image search results.
How to fix it: Every meaningful image on your site needs alt text that describes what the image shows and why it’s there. A team photo might be: “Connect Media Agency team collaborating on a client website design in the Coppell office.” A decorative image that doesn’t convey information can have empty alt text (alt=””) so screen readers skip it intentionally rather than stumbling over it.
WordPress fix: In the Media Library, click on any image and add alt text in the “Alternative Text” field. For images already on pages, edit the page in Elementor, click the image widget, and add alt text in the Content tab. Audit your existing images by going to Media > Library and sorting by images without alt text.
Mistake #3 — Missing Form Labels (Found on 49% of Websites)
The problem: Form fields — contact forms, newsletter signups, quote request forms — without programmatic labels that tell screen readers what information goes in each field. A sighted user sees a field with “Email” next to it. A screen reader user hears “edit text” with no context about what to enter.
What it costs you: Form completions. If a potential client can’t fill out your contact form using a screen reader, they can’t reach you. If anyone finds your form confusing — even sighted users on mobile who can’t see placeholder text once they start typing — you lose leads. And since forms are your primary conversion mechanism, inaccessible forms directly reduce revenue.
How to fix it: Every form field needs an associated label element in the HTML. If you’re using placeholder text (the gray text inside the field) as your label, that’s not enough — placeholders disappear when the user starts typing, and screen readers may not announce them.
WordPress fix: If you use JetFormBuilder or WPForms, enable visible labels for every field in the form builder settings. In JetFormBuilder, each field has a “Label” setting — make sure it’s filled in and set to visible. Avoid using “Hidden Label” unless you have a specific accessibility-compliant reason for doing so.
Mistake #4 — Empty or Vague Links (Found on 45% of Websites)
The problem: Links that say “Click here,” “Read more,” or “Learn more” without any context about where they lead. Screen reader users often navigate by pulling up a list of all links on a page. If that list contains twelve entries that all say “Read more,” the user has no way to know which one goes where.
What it costs you: Navigation frustration and abandoned visits. This also affects your SEO — Google uses link text (anchor text) to understand what the linked page is about. “Read more” tells Google nothing. “Read our web design case study for Fish & Ski Marine” tells Google exactly what’s on the other end.
How to fix it: Make every link descriptive enough that someone reading it out of context would know where it leads. Instead of “Click here to learn about our services,” write “Explore our web design services.” Instead of “Read more,” write “Read the full Chainwise CPA case study.”
WordPress fix: Review your pages in Elementor and update button text and hyperlink text. Search your site for instances of “click here,” “read more,” and “learn more” — most page builders have a search function that makes this quick.
Mistake #5 — Broken Heading Hierarchy
The problem: Using heading tags (H1, H2, H3) based on how they look rather than what they mean. Skipping from H1 directly to H3 because H2 looks too big. Using H4 for a main section title because the font size looks right. Or having multiple H1 tags on a single page.
What it costs you: Screen reader users rely on heading structure to navigate your pages the same way sighted users scan for bold section titles. A broken heading hierarchy makes your content confusing and hard to navigate. It also undermines your SEO — Google uses heading hierarchy to understand your content structure and topical organization.
How to fix it: Every page should have exactly one H1 (the page title). Main sections use H2. Subsections use H3. Sub-subsections use H4. Never skip levels — don’t go from H2 to H4 without an H3 in between. Choose heading levels based on structural hierarchy, not visual styling.
WordPress fix: In Elementor, select any heading widget and check the HTML tag setting (not just the visual size). If you need an H2 to look smaller, change the typography settings rather than switching to an H3. Elementor lets you control the visual size independently from the semantic heading level.
Mistake #6 — Keyboard Navigation Failures
The problem: Interactive elements — menus, buttons, forms, sliders, pop-ups — that can’t be reached or operated using only a keyboard. Many people with motor disabilities, temporary injuries, or repetitive strain conditions navigate websites entirely with the Tab key and Enter key.
What it costs you: If someone can’t tab through your navigation menu, reach your contact form, or close a pop-up without a mouse, your site is unusable for them. Keyboard navigation failures are also flagged by accessibility auditing tools and can be cited in ADA complaints.
How to fix it: Test your site yourself — put your mouse aside and try to navigate your entire homepage using only the Tab key (to move between elements), Enter (to activate buttons and links), and Escape (to close pop-ups). Can you reach every interactive element? Can you see which element is currently focused (is there a visible outline)? Can you close pop-ups and modals without a mouse?
WordPress fix: Avoid JavaScript-heavy interactive elements that don’t include keyboard event handlers. If you use pop-ups (Elementor’s Popup Builder), test that they can be closed with the Escape key. Ensure your theme doesn’t remove the default focus outline — some themes hide it for visual aesthetics, which breaks keyboard navigation visibility.
Mistake #7 — Missing Video Captions and Transcripts
The problem: Videos on your website without captions or transcripts. This excludes people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and it also affects anyone watching in a noisy environment, in a quiet office, or in a situation where they can’t turn on sound.
What it costs you: Beyond excluding a significant audience, uncaptioned videos are invisible to search engines. Search crawlers can’t watch video — they rely on captions and transcripts to understand video content. A captioned video is searchable content. An uncaptioned video is a black box.
How to fix it: Add captions to all videos. If you host on YouTube, use YouTube’s auto-caption feature as a starting point, then edit for accuracy. For videos embedded directly on your site, provide a transcript below the video. For audio content (podcasts, interviews), transcripts serve the same function.
Mistake #8 — Inaccessible PDFs
The problem: PDFs that are scanned images of documents, rather than properly tagged digital files. A screen reader can’t read a scanned PDF — it sees a picture, not text. Even digitally created PDFs often lack proper heading structure, alt text for images, and reading order tags.
What it costs you: If you use PDFs for menus, brochures, forms, or documents, anyone using a screen reader can’t access that information. This is also one of the most commonly cited issues in ADA complaints.
How to fix it: Whenever possible, publish content as web pages instead of PDFs. If you must use PDFs, create them from digital source files (Word, Google Docs) rather than scanning paper, and run them through an accessibility checker (Adobe Acrobat Pro has one built in). Add alt text to images, create a logical heading structure, and set the reading order.
Mistake #9 — Missing Document Language Tag
The problem: The HTML of your pages doesn’t declare what language the content is in. This is a single line of code — <html lang="en"> for English — and its absence means screen readers don’t know how to pronounce the words on the page.
What it costs you: Screen readers might default to the wrong language pronunciation, making your content unintelligible. Roughly 17% of websites have this issue, and it’s one of the easiest to fix.
WordPress fix: Most modern WordPress themes set this automatically. Check by viewing your page source (right-click > View Page Source) and looking for lang="en" in the first line. If it’s missing, your theme or a plugin may be overriding it — a developer can fix this in under five minutes.
Mistake #10 — Relying on an Accessibility Overlay Widget
The problem: This is the mistake that’s different from the others because it involves actively doing the wrong thing while believing you’re doing the right thing. Accessibility overlay widgets — the toolbar tools that promise to make your site accessible with a single line of code — don’t actually fix the underlying issues.
What it costs you: A false sense of compliance. In 2025, the FTC reached a $1 million settlement with accessiBe for misleading marketing claims about its overlay widget. Research from the first half of 2025 showed that 22.6% of accessibility lawsuits targeted websites that already had overlay widgets installed. The widgets don’t prevent lawsuits because they don’t fix the actual code-level accessibility problems.
How to fix it: If you have an overlay widget installed, it’s not making your site compliant. Real accessibility requires fixing the underlying HTML, CSS, and content issues — the same issues described in mistakes #1 through #9. An overlay can’t add alt text that accurately describes your specific images. It can’t restructure your headings to be logical. It can’t rewrite your vague link text to be descriptive.
Remove the overlay and invest in actual remediation. It costs less in the long run, it actually works, and it protects you legally in a way that an overlay demonstrably does not.
How to Check If Your Website Has These Problems
The Free Tools That Do 80% of the Work
Google Lighthouse (built into Chrome): Right-click on any page, select “Inspect,” then click the “Lighthouse” tab. Run an accessibility audit. Lighthouse scores your page out of 100 and lists specific issues with links to documentation explaining each one. Aim for a score of 90 or above.
WAVE (wave.webaim.org): Enter your URL and WAVE scans the page, highlighting errors directly on the page itself — missing alt text, contrast failures, missing labels, and structural issues. The visual overlay makes it easy to see exactly where problems are, even if you’re not technical.
Both tools are free and take less than a minute per page. Run them on your homepage, your most important service page, and your contact page. Those three will give you a representative picture.
The Manual Tests That Catch What Tools Miss
Automated tools catch about 30–40% of accessibility issues. The rest require manual testing. Here are three manual tests anyone can do:
Keyboard test: Put your mouse aside and navigate your site using only Tab, Enter, and Escape. Can you reach everything? Can you see where you are on the page? Can you complete your contact form?
Zoom test: Use your browser’s zoom function (Ctrl + on Windows, Cmd + on Mac) to increase the page to 200%. Does the layout still work? Can you still read everything? Does content overlap or get cut off?
Screen reader test: If you’re on a Mac, activate VoiceOver (Cmd + F5) and listen to how your homepage sounds. On Windows, try NVDA (free screen reader). You’ll quickly hear whether your headings, images, and links make sense without visual context.
When to Get a Professional Audit
Free tools and manual testing can identify the most common issues. A professional accessibility audit goes deeper — testing across multiple assistive technologies, evaluating WCAG conformance systematically, and providing a prioritized remediation plan. Consider a professional audit if your organization is in a regulated industry (healthcare, finance, legal, government), if you’ve received an ADA demand letter, or if you want documentation of your compliance efforts for legal protection.
Fixing Accessibility on WordPress Sites
Alt Text and Image Management
Go to Media > Library and review each image. WordPress makes it easy to add alt text — click any image and enter a description in the “Alternative Text” field. For sites with hundreds of images, prioritize your most-visited pages first.
Heading Structure in Elementor
When editing in Elementor, click any heading and check the “HTML Tag” dropdown — not the size setting. If your visual hierarchy is correct but your HTML tags are wrong (H4 used for a main heading because you liked the size), fix the tag and adjust the typography separately.
Form Labels in JetFormBuilder and WPForms
Both plugins support visible labels by default. In JetFormBuilder, each field has a Label property — make sure it’s populated and visible. In WPForms, labels are enabled by default. Verify they haven’t been hidden for aesthetic reasons during design.
The Plugin Category That Doesn’t Help
Accessibility overlay plugins (accessiBe, UserWay, AudioEye’s widget) add a toolbar to your site but don’t fix the underlying code. Based on current enforcement data — including the FTC’s accessiBe settlement and the 22.6% of lawsuits hitting overlay-equipped sites — these tools create a false sense of security. Remove them and fix the actual issues instead.
Why Fixing Accessibility Also Improves Your SEO, Mobile Experience, and AI Visibility
Here’s something we’ve seen consistently across client projects: accessibility fixes compound across other channels.
Proper heading hierarchy helps screen readers AND Google’s crawler AND voice search assistants parse your content structure. Alt text helps screen reader users AND image search AND AI tools that reference your images. Fast page load speeds help users with disabilities on adaptive devices AND mobile users AND voice search results (which load 52% faster than average). Clean semantic HTML helps assistive technologies AND search engine crawlers AND AI systems deciding what to cite.
If you’ve read our guides on mobile-first design, E-E-A-T, voice search optimization, or generative engine optimization, you’ve seen this pattern: the same foundational principles — clear structure, descriptive content, fast performance, transparent authorship — serve every channel simultaneously. Accessibility is another layer of the same foundation.
When we rebuilt client sites with accessibility built in from the start — alongside SEO and mobile optimization — results followed. Fish & Ski Marine’s 500% traffic growth wasn’t just an SEO story. Chainwise CPA’s 101% organic growth didn’t come from keywords alone. These results came from sites that were technically sound, structurally clear, and genuinely usable by everyone — which is what accessibility delivers.
What to Ask Your Web Designer About Accessibility
If you work with a web designer or agency, these questions help you evaluate whether accessibility is part of their process:
“What WCAG level do you build to?” You want to hear “WCAG 2.2 AA” at minimum. If they don’t know what WCAG is, that’s a red flag.
“How do you test for accessibility during the build?” You want to hear about automated tools (Lighthouse, WAVE), manual keyboard testing, and screen reader testing — not “we use an overlay widget.”
“What happens to accessibility when I add new content after launch?” This is critical. Your site might be accessible on launch day, but every new image without alt text, every new PDF without tags, every new video without captions degrades compliance. Ask how ongoing maintenance addresses this.
“Do you include accessibility in your maintenance plans?” At CMA, accessibility monitoring is built into our maintenance process because we’ve seen how quickly compliance erodes as new content is added. This is also where our website maintenance checklist comes in — accessibility is a recurring task, not a one-time project.
If your site failed some of the checks in this guide — or if you’ve been relying on an overlay widget and now realize it’s not actually protecting you — we’d welcome a conversation about what to prioritize. Our team builds WCAG 2.2 AA-compliant WordPress sites for small businesses, non-profits, and professional service firms across Dallas and nationally. Accessibility isn’t an add-on in our process. It’s built into how we design, develop, and maintain every site — because it’s better for your users, better for your SEO, and far less expensive than fixing problems after a lawsuit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the most common website accessibility mistakes?
The six most common errors, based on WebAIM’s analysis of one million websites, are low color contrast (affecting 86% of homepages), missing image alt text (55%), missing form input labels (49%), empty or vague links (45%), empty buttons, and missing document language tags (17%). These six categories account for the vast majority of all detectable accessibility failures. Most are straightforward to fix once identified.
How do I check if my website is accessible?
Start with two free tools: Google Lighthouse (built into Chrome — right-click any page, select Inspect, then run a Lighthouse accessibility audit) and WAVE (wave.webaim.org — enter your URL for a visual overlay of accessibility errors). Then do a manual keyboard test: navigate your site using only the Tab and Enter keys to verify everything works without a mouse. These three steps will identify the majority of common issues.
Can I get sued for an inaccessible website?
Yes. Over 5,000 ADA website accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2025, a 37% increase over the prior year. There is no small business exemption — the majority of lawsuits target organizations with under $25 million in annual revenue. Average settlements are around $30,000, with defense legal fees adding $30,000 to $175,000. Proactive accessibility remediation is substantially less expensive than reactive legal defense.
What is WCAG compliance?
WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the international standard for web accessibility published by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). WCAG 2.2 is the current version, and Level AA is the level most laws and regulations reference. It includes specific technical requirements for things like color contrast ratios, text alternatives for images, keyboard navigation, heading structure, and form labeling. Meeting WCAG 2.2 AA is widely considered the benchmark for ADA compliance.
Do accessibility overlay widgets make my site compliant?
No. Overlay widgets (accessiBe, UserWay, and similar products) add a toolbar to your site but don’t fix the underlying code-level accessibility issues. In 2025, the FTC reached a $1 million settlement with accessiBe for misleading marketing claims, and research showed that 22.6% of accessibility lawsuits in the first half of 2025 targeted websites that already had overlay widgets installed. Genuine accessibility requires fixing the actual HTML, content, and design — not adding a layer on top.
How much does it cost to fix accessibility issues?
For a typical small business WordPress site, addressing the most common accessibility issues costs between $1,000 and $5,000 depending on the number of pages and severity of issues. A comprehensive accessibility audit and remediation for a mid-size site typically runs $3,000 to $10,000. Compare that to the cost of a lawsuit: $30,000 average settlement plus $30,000 to $175,000 in legal fees. Maintaining accessibility through ongoing monitoring is far less expensive than either emergency remediation or legal defense.
