Why accessibility matters
Around one in five people has a disability, and many more have temporary or situational limits: a broken arm, bright sunlight, a slow connection. An accessible site works for all of them, and for search engines, which read your page much like a screen reader does.
It is increasingly a legal question too. The UK Equality Act 2010 and the US Americans with Disabilities Act both apply to websites, and the European Accessibility Act has applied to many businesses selling to EU customers since June 2025. WCAG 2.2 is the standard those rules point to.
What an automated checker can and cannot do
Automated tests are very good at finding the mechanical failures: images with no alt attribute, form fields with no label, buttons that a screen reader would announce as just "button". These are the most common problems on the web and they are quick to fix.
Automated tools cannot judge everything. Whether alt text actually describes an image, whether the page makes sense read aloud, and whether everything works with a keyboard alone all need a person. Use this checker to clear the obvious issues, then tab through your page without a mouse.
Quick wins
- Add <html lang="en-GB"> (or your language) so screen readers use the right pronunciation.
- Give every meaningful image a short description in its alt attribute, and decorative images alt="".
- Connect every form field to a <label>, or give it an aria-label.
- Give icon-only buttons and links an aria-label, e.g. aria-label="Search".
- Replace "click here" and "read more" with text that says where the link goes.