Six fixes cover most of it, none are expensive, and all of them also help people with no disability at all. How to test without buying anything.
Key Takeaways
- Six fixes cover most of it, none are expensive, and all of them also help people with no disability at all.
- How to test without buying anything.
The short answer
Accessibility is not a feature you add at the end. It is mostly a set of things you stop doing wrong: unlabelled buttons, text you cannot read, forms you cannot complete with a keyboard, and colour used as the only way to tell one thing from another.
Six fixes cover most of it, none of them are expensive, and all of them also make the site better for people with no disability at all.
The six that matter most
1. Contrast you can actually read
Light grey text on white is the most common failure on business websites and it is a design habit rather than a decision. Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1. Check it with any contrast tool rather than guessing, because the eye adapts and designers look at their own work on good screens in good light.
2. Alt text that says something
An image that carries meaning needs a description. An image that is pure decoration needs an empty alt attribute so screen readers skip it. Both are correct answers; the wrong answer is no alt attribute at all, or alt="image".
3. One h1, then headings in order
Screen reader users navigate by heading the way sighted users skim. Jumping from h1 to h3 because h3 looked the right size breaks that. Choose heading levels by structure and set the size with CSS.
4. Real buttons and real links
A div with a click handler is invisible to a keyboard and meaningless to a screen reader. If it navigates, it is an anchor with an href. If it acts, it is a button. This one fix removes a large share of the problems on most sites.
5. Labelled form fields
Placeholder text is not a label. It disappears when typing starts, it usually fails contrast, and assistive technology does not reliably announce it. Every input needs a real label, visible or properly associated.
6. A visible focus indicator
Someone removed the focus outline because it looked untidy. Now a keyboard user cannot tell where they are on the page. If the default outline is ugly, design a better one rather than deleting it.
Testing without buying anything
Put the mouse down and press Tab through the whole page. Can you reach everything? Can you see where you are? Can you complete the contact form and submit it? Most sites fail inside the first minute, and the failures are usually in a custom dropdown or a modal that traps focus.
Then zoom to 200 per cent. Does the layout hold or does text start overlapping? Then turn the sound on and run the page through a screen reader for two minutes. You do not need expertise to notice when it reads "link link button graphic".
Why it is worth doing anyway
Beyond the obvious reason, the same work improves things you already care about. Proper headings and alt text help search engines understand the page. Keyboard access and visible focus help anyone on a laptop without a mouse. Good contrast helps everyone on a phone in Kathmandu sunlight, which is most of your traffic.
If you are selling to an INGO or bidding on donor-funded work, accessibility requirements increasingly appear in the terms. Our note on requirements hidden in tenders covers where those clauses turn up.
Frequently asked questions
Is accessibility a legal requirement in Nepal?
Obligations vary by sector and by who you are selling to, and international clients often impose their own standards contractually. Check your contracts. The absence of a local requirement is not a reason to exclude users.
How much does it cost to fix?
Built in from the start, close to nothing. Retrofitted onto a site with custom dropdowns and div-based buttons, considerably more. That is the usual shape of this kind of decision.
Do I need a full WCAG audit?
Not to begin. Fix the six above, test with a keyboard, and you will have removed most real barriers. A formal audit makes sense when a contract requires one.
Does accessibility help SEO?
Indirectly and genuinely. Headings, alt text and semantic markup are things search engines read too. It is not a ranking trick, it is the same underlying quality.
What about an accessibility overlay widget?
The accessibility community is broadly critical of them, and they do not fix underlying markup problems. Fix the markup instead.
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Written by
Antbytelabs
Writing about the software we build at Antbytelabs in Bhaktapur, Nepal.