Website accessibility: what UK businesses need to know

Here’s something most small business owners haven’t considered: roughly one in five people in the UK has some form of disability. That’s millions of potential customers. If your website isn’t built to be accessible to them, you’re not just being unhelpful — you’re quietly turning away business you don’t even know you’re losing.

Accessibility has a reputation for being a niche compliance issue, but it’s actually three things at once: a customer issue, a legal issue, and an SEO issue. Let’s take them in turn.

The customer issue

People access websites in all sorts of ways. Some use screen readers that read the page aloud. Some can’t use a mouse and navigate by keyboard. Some have poor vision and need to zoom in or use high contrast. Some struggle with tiny text or fiddly buttons on a phone. A site that hasn’t been built with these people in mind simply doesn’t work for them — they leave, and they find a competitor whose site does.

This isn’t a small group. And they’re not asking for special treatment — they’re asking to be able to give you their money, and being prevented by a site that wasn’t built properly.

The legal issue

In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 requires that businesses make reasonable adjustments so disabled people can access their services — and that includes websites. There have been cases of businesses facing legal action over inaccessible websites, and the direction of travel is firmly toward stricter enforcement, not looser. For most small businesses the risk isn’t a lawsuit tomorrow, but it’s a real and growing expectation that your site works for everyone.

The SEO issue (the one nobody mentions)

Here’s the bit that usually gets owners’ attention. Google is, in a sense, the most demanding disabled user of your website. It can’t see images — it relies on text descriptions. It can’t click buttons — it relies on clean, logical structure. It struggles with messy, badly-built pages. So almost everything that makes a site accessible to a disabled person also makes it easier for Google to understand and rank. Accessibility and good SEO are, in practice, the same thing.

What an accessible site actually looks like

• Text descriptions on images (alt text), so screen readers can describe them and Google can understand them.
• Enough colour contrast that text is readable for people with low vision — pale grey on white doesn’t count.
• Logical structure — headings in order, a clear flow, so people navigating without a mouse can move through the page.
• Text that can be resized without breaking the layout, for people who need to zoom in.
• Descriptive link text — “Read our privacy policy” rather than just “click here”.
• Forms that can be filled in with a keyboard and that clearly explain what’s needed.

None of this is exotic. It’s just good, careful building. A properly built site is accessible by default; it’s the badly-built or neglected ones that exclude people.

The honest takeaway

Accessibility isn’t a nice-to-have or a box to tick — it’s a measure of whether your website actually works for all of your potential customers. The cost of ignoring it is invisible (the customers you never see leave) and growing (the legal and SEO expectations only head one way). The cost of doing it is simply building the site properly in the first place.

If your site was built well, it’s probably more accessible than you think. If it was thrown together or left to age, there’s a good chance it’s quietly turning away a fifth of your potential audience. Worth finding out which.