5 fundamentals to incorporate in your web design for accessibility.

The internet should be a place where everyone can access the same information from anywhere in the world. Creating a website that is accessible to all users is not just good practice; it’s a necessity and it will become law in June 2025 as per the European Accessibility Act (EAA).

While online accessibility has been around for some time, there can be many moving pieces to consider in your web design, such as high-contrast text, audio pages for the blind, and optimised media for example. Incorporating these kinds of accessibility features ensures that everyone can interact with your content seamlessly.

In this blog, we share five fundamental principles you need to include in your web design for accessibility, along with tips to ensure you’re prepared for the EAA when it comes into force. With these key principles, you will be creating an inclusive online space that caters to all users and leaves a positive impression of easily accessible content. First, let’s take a look at the importance of accessibility in web design.

Why is accessibility in web design important?

As we’ve previously mentioned, accessibility in web design is crucial for ensuring that all users, regardless of any disabilities or limitations they may have, can access, navigate, and interact with your website easily. It’s also vital not just for people with disabilities, it’s also important for those with temporary or situational limitations, such as a poor internet connection.

Incorporating accessibility features such as alt-text for images, keyboard navigation, and accessible forms on your website means you are making your site more inclusive and enhancing user experience. This can lead to numerous benefits for your business such as increased engagement, improved search engine optimisation (SEO), and a positive brand image. 

As well as that, from June 2025, allowing for accessibility in your web design will become law for all EU member states. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) will apply to any business that offers products or services to consumers in the EU, and this will include UK businesses. This means that ensuring your website encompasses accessibility features will not only be a moral obligation, but also a legal requirement.

5 fundamentals of accessibility in web design

When it comes to your web design, there are several key fundamentals that you should implement to incorporate accessibility to ensure it’s user-friendly for everyone. Here are some to keep in mind.

Be mindful of colour contrast

Colour contrast is a problem that is often ignored when it comes to web accessibility. People with low vision can find it difficult to read text against a low-contrast background colour. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment. With this in mind, it’s crucial to think about colour contrast on your site.

You want to aim for a strong contrast ratio between text and background colours – for example, dark text on a light background or vice versa. You can use colour contrast checkers to help you determine if your colour choices meet accessibility standards. Doing this will make it easier for all visitors to engage with your content effortlessly.

Use alt-tags on your images

Including descriptive alt-tags in all of your images is a crucial component of web design accessibility. This is because they serve as text alternatives that are displayed when an image can’t be rendered or if someone is using a screen reader. They should provide a textual description of your image to allow visitors to understand the content and purpose of the image on your site.

Not only can alt-tags provide context for your image, they also improve your SEO efforts as they also provide context for search engines to better understand the content of your webpage and determine where you’ll rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Ensure your site is keyboard-friendly

Ensuring your site is keyboard-friendly means implementing features like keyboard shortcuts, logical tabbing order, and visible focus indicators to your site. This allows for all elements, including interactive elements, on your site to be reached and activated using keyboard commands alone.

You can quickly and easily test this by using the ‘Tab’ key on your keyboard to move between links and buttons on your webpages to ensure a seamless experience for those who rely solely on keyboard navigation. By making your site keyboard-friendly, you can ensure that users who have disabilities or cannot use a mouse can easily access and interact with your content.

Be sure to transcribe videos

If you utilise video across your website, it’s important to consider those who have hearing impairments will also be watching these. The WHO estimates that by 2050, nearly 2.5 billion people are expected to have some degree of hearing loss. That’s why transcribing your videos for those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or simply prefer reading over watching is so important.

There are numerous tools online that can quickly and easily add transcripts to your videos, and doing so not only helps those with hearing impairments, but also improves user experience by allowing people to quickly find and reference specific information within a video. And just like alt-tags, video transcripts can also boost your SEO efforts by making your video content indexable and searchable. 

Optimise your heading tags

Heading tags define the hierarchy of your content on a webpage. When you optimise and structure your heading tags logically (from H1 to H6), you make it easier for screen readers to understand the information that is on that page. This is because screen readers allow those with vision limitations to listen to a list of all the headings on a page and skip to the content based on title categories, which is why it’s also important to ensure the content beneath them is relevant.

Again, optimising your headings not only helps users navigate and understand the content on your webpages, but it also helps with your SEO efforts too. Including your target keywords in your headings can help search engines understand the content on your page and determine your ranking position in SERPs.

How to prepare for the European Accessibility Act

As we’ve mentioned, the European Accessibility Act will be coming into force in June 2025, meaning ensuring accessibility in web design will be a legal requirement. While it is becoming an enforceable law for EU member states, it will still apply to UK businesses offering products or services to EU consumers. 

AbilityNet is a helpful online resource that explains the act in more detail and offers ways businesses can prepare to ensure they’re ready for when the act comes into force. Here are some of our tips to prepare:

• Check your eligibility – even if you’re a UK-based firm, be sure to check if you’re targeting EU customers or public bodies, as you’ll need to ensure compliance if you are.
• Audit your digital offerings – this includes your website, apps, and any other digital interfaces to ensure it aligns with the EAA’s principles.
• Prioritise key services – be sure to focus on making ecommerce platforms, banking services, transport-related apps or websites, e-books, ATMs/ticketing/check-in machines, and telephony and media services accessible, if they’re applicable to your business.
• Embed accessibility in development – ensure accessibility is part of your product lifecycle and not just an add-on.
• Use WCAG 2.1 (AA) as a benchmark – this is the best way to demonstrate compliance.
• Train your internal teams – from developers to marketers, ensure your staff understands digital accessibility requirements.
• Keep documentation – records of compliance efforts, audits, testing, and improvements may be needed for regulators.

Need help with accessibility in your web design?

If you don’t factor in these key fundamentals of accessibility in your web design, your website will only go so far. By designing an accessible website, not only are you creating a more inclusive space online and adhering to the EAA when the time comes, you’re unlocking the true potential of your site. Implementing accessibility features such as alt-tags, scripts for videos, and optimised heading tags, allows your site to be accessible to everyone, regardless of their limitations.

If you’d like more expert advice on web design accessibility, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. Our specialist web design team can create a stunning website that is not only built for success, but is built for anyone and everyone.