Is Your Website Accessible? Run This 5-Minute Test to Find Out
Website accessibility is becoming a legal requirement and provides a competitive edge. Lawsuits targeting inaccessible sites continue to rise, and more organizations now include accessibility requirements alongside other vendor qualifications.
Take five minutes and check your own site for potential red flags. You’ll come out of it with a quick sense of risk and a starting point for any necessary fixes.
This is not legal advice. It can help you spot common website accessibility issues worth reviewing with your web developer.
Quick Website Accessibility Test
Think of this as triage. You aren’t certifying the site — you’re looking for obvious problems you can’t ignore.
1. Navigate Your Website With the Tab Key
Put your mouse aside and navigate your website using only the Tab key. Every link, button, and form field should receive focus in a logical order, and a visible outline should always show where you are. If focus skips around, vanishes, or gets trapped inside a widget, keyboard-only users — including many people with motor or visual impairments — may not be able to use your site.
2. Run a Lighthouse Accessibility Scan
Google Chrome includes a built-in audit tool called Lighthouse. To run it, open your homepage in Chrome, right-click anywhere on the page, and choose Inspect. When the developer panel appears, select the Lighthouse tab, check Accessibility, then click Analyze. In under a minute, Chrome gives you a score and a list of issues ranked by severity.
Lighthouse grades accessibility on a 0-to-100 scale:
- 90 or above — Most automated checks passed. Not a full certification, but a good sign.
- 50 to 89 — Usability pain points that can usually be fixed with better contrast, clear headings, or proper form labels.
- Below 50 — Significant issues that need attention.
3. Use a Browser Extension for a Deeper Look
Lighthouse stops at what an algorithm can judge. It won’t tell you if your alt text is meaningful or if a custom widget makes sense to a screen reader. After running your Lighthouse scan, install an accessibility checker extension such as axe DevTools, WAVE, or Accessibility Insights. These tools add colored markers to the page showing errors, warnings, and passes, with plain-language explanations for each issue.
Common Issues Found on Business Websites
Many sites fail accessibility checks for the same three reasons:
Low-contrast text or buttons that disappear against the background, especially on banner images.
Missing or vague alt text on images that carry meaning, leaving screen-reader users without context.
Forms without visible labels, forcing visitors who rely on assistive technology to guess what each field does.
Fixing these three issues alone can improve your Lighthouse score significantly and, more importantly, makes your site more usable for real visitors.
How to Make Your Website More Accessible
Fix the visual foundation. Raise color contrast on text and buttons, make sure focus outlines stay visible when you tab through links, and put headings in a logical H1, H2, H3 order. These changes can improve usability in one session.
Update your content and images. Write descriptive alt text for images that carry meaning, add visible labels to every form field, and caption or transcribe any video or audio on the site.
Validate and document. Rerun your scans to confirm critical errors are resolved. Consider adding a short accessibility statement to your footer to let visitors know you take inclusion seriously.
Keep Accessibility Top of Mind
Running these tests and fixing the obvious issues will put you on stronger footing and improve the real-world experience for every visitor to your site.
Need help making your website more accessible or improving its overall quality? Contact Roe Digital or learn about our website design services.