An accessible website is one that people with disabilities can use: people who are blind and use screen readers, people with low vision who zoom in, people who can't use a mouse, and people with hearing loss. That's a large share of your potential clients. It's also a growing source of legal claims, especially in Florida.
Why this matters now
WebAIM tests the home pages of the top one million websites every year. In its 2026 report, 95.9% of those home pages had accessibility failures that automated tools could detect, with an average of 56.1 errors per page. Both numbers were worse than the year before.
Meanwhile, lawsuits are rising. According to Seyfarth Shaw's annual count, plaintiffs filed 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in federal court in 2025, up 27% from 2024. Florida had the second-highest total in the country, with 961 federal filings, nearly double its 2024 count. Those figures don't include demand letters or state court cases.
The good news: most of the common failures are straightforward to fix once you know what to look for.
The standard: WCAG 2.1 AA
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the widely used technical standard for web accessibility. Level AA of version 2.1 is the benchmark most organizations aim for. You don't need to read the whole standard to make real progress; the checklist below covers the issues that show up most often.
Ten checks you can do yourself
- Text contrast. Light gray text on white, or white text on a pale photo, is hard for many people to read. It's also the most common failure WebAIM finds, on 83.9% of home pages. Free contrast checkers will tell you if a color pair passes.
- Image descriptions. Every meaningful image needs alternative text that describes it for screen reader users. Decorative images should be marked so they're skipped. Missing alternative text appeared on 53.1% of home pages.
- Form labels. Every form field needs a visible label that's connected to it in the code. Placeholder text inside the box isn't enough. Missing labels appeared on 51% of home pages.
- Keyboard only. Put your mouse away and press Tab to move through your site. Can you reach and use every link, button, menu and form field?
- Visible focus. While tabbing, can you always see which item is selected? If the outline disappears, keyboard users are lost.
- Links that make sense. Links should say where they go. "Click here" and icon-only links with no text are confusing for screen reader users. Empty links appeared on 46.3% of home pages.
- Buttons with names. Icon buttons, like a menu or a close button, need a text name in the code. Empty buttons appeared on 30.6% of home pages.
- Page language. Each page should declare its language, so screen readers pronounce it correctly. This one-line fix was missing on 13.5% of home pages.
- Zoom to 200%. Zoom your browser to 200%. Does everything still fit and work, without text overlapping or disappearing?
- Video and audio. Videos need captions, and audio-only content needs a transcript. Autoplaying media should be avoidable.
What a proper audit adds
Automated tools catch only part of the picture. A full audit adds manual testing with a keyboard and screen reader, checks your forms and key journeys end to end, ranks problems by risk and impact, and re-tests after fixes. It also gives you documentation showing you've taken accessibility seriously, which is valuable on its own.
Build it in from the start
Accessibility is far cheaper to build in than to bolt on. Every Veritect site is designed and coded toward WCAG 2.1 AA from the first sketch: readable contrast, real labels, full keyboard support and a reduced-motion version of every animation. Our accessibility audit service applies the same checks to existing sites, with a plain-English report.
This article is general information, not legal advice. If you've received a demand letter or lawsuit, talk with an attorney.