The way people interact with websites is more nuanced than ever before.
Users don’t all navigate the web in the same way. Many rely on tools that adapt content to fit their needs. Yet, most websites are still designed with a narrow view of the “average” user, leaving significant gaps in usability.
Accessibility improvements can significantly expand your reach, making your website usable to a broader audience.
The good news? Improving accessibility is often easier than you think, and it can have a meaningful impact on both user experience and business performance.
The Current State of Website Accessibility
Accessibility is a Fundamental Aspect of the Internet’s Power.
From accessing information to making purchasing decisions, if your website isn’t accessible to users, you’re creating a bad experience for your customers and losing out on business.
A study conducted by WebAim with data from February 2025 regarding website accessibility showed that out of the top 1 million home pages on the internet, 94.8% had accessibility failures.
The most common error is low contrast text followed by missing alternative text, missing form labels, empty links, empty buttons, and missing language.
Why? Many business leaders, as well as website designers and developers, don’t know where to start when it comes to accessibility. A common misconception is that optimizing your website for accessibility is difficult.
Small changes to your website may make a big difference in ensuring accessibility and compliance
What Are Assistive Technologies?
Assistive technologies are designed to improve the functional capabilities of a person. These could include something as simple and common-place as eyeglasses.
Some assistive technologies enable people to use different devices to browse the internet.
Online, and as they relate to website accessibility, one of the most common and essential assistive technologies is the screen reader.
Screen reader software translates website content seen on the screen into audio, allowing low-vision and blind users to access that content.
There are a variety of first- and third-party screen reader applications. Most operating systems have screen reader software built-in.
Some of the more popular screenreaders include:
- JAWS from Freedom Scientific
- NVDA from NV Access
- VoiceOver on Apple devices
- Narrator on Windows devices
- ZoomText
- ChromeVox
- System Access
- Window-Eyes from GW Micro, Inc.
Besides screen readers, non-blind but low-vision users can employ assistive technologies, such as zoom settings to increase the text size on the screen, or dark and high contrast modes of many operating systems, to improve contrast and clarity of content.
Users can utilize hardware, such as screen enlargers, that help magnify content on screen without the use of software. For users with limited mobility or other physical disabilities, pointing devices may be used to enable better interactions with devices
More recently, assistive technologies have jumped into the mainstream with the help of voice assistant-enabled devices such as Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant.
People of all abilities are using voice assistants to do a number of tasks online.
By creating accessible websites, we can empower people to interact with websites in the way that they prefer.
This blog is part of our Website Accessibility Guide, a series exploring how businesses can build more inclusive websites.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- Why website accessibility matters and the impact it has on your bottom line
- How to design and build inclusive websites to provide a better experience for all of your customers
- How to implement simple changes to create websites that can be accessed by people of all abilities, and ensure usability for assistive technologies
Click here to download the complete guide as a PDF. You can also continue following along as we publish additional articles from the guide here on our blog.
Let’s create a more inclusive internet together!