A Practical Website Accessibility Checklist for Real-World Use

If you’ve spent more than five minutes looking into ADA or website accessibility, you’ve probably realized how quickly it turns into a rabbit hole. There’s a lot of theory, a lot of technical language, and not a lot of clear direction for what actually matters on a typical business website. This is not a perfect, cover-every-edge-case standard. This is the practical baseline—the things that make your site more usable, more defensible, and far less likely to cause problems. In other words, this is the version you can realistically implement without turning every project into a full-time compliance audit.

This is the “keep clients out of trouble” baseline, not gold-plated compliance.

1. Text & Readability

• Sufficient color contrast (no light gray on white nonsense)
• Body text at a readable size (16px+ is safe)
• Don’t rely on color alone to convey meaning

2. Images

• Add alt text to all meaningful images
• Decorative images → empty alt (alt=””)

3. Navigation

• Menu works with keyboard (tab key)
• Clear focus states (you can see where you are)
• No “mystery meat” navigation (buttons should make sense)

4. Forms

• Every field has a label
• Error messages are clear (not just red text)
• Required fields are indicated clearly

5. Links & Buttons

• “Click here” → nope
• Use descriptive text (“View Services,” “Download Guide”)

6. Structure

• Proper heading order (H1 → H2 → H3, no chaos)
• Use real lists instead of faking them with dashes

7. Media

• Videos: captions if they matter
• Avoid auto-playing audio/video

8. Basic Technical

• Page has a language set (lang=”en”)
• Buttons are actual <button> elements, not div hacks

Reality check (so you don’t overpromise)

Even if you do all this:

• You are reducing risk, not eliminating it
• Full compliance is a moving target
• But this puts you far ahead of most sites