The Who and What of Web Accessibility
What is web accessibility?
Web accessibility is the process of designing and developing websites so that people of all abilities, including blind, low‑vision, Deaf, hard‑of‑hearing, motor‑impaired, neurodivergent, or with assistive technologies, can perceive, navigate, and interact with the content on your website effectively. It ensures that all elements from text, color, images and videos to navigation and code structure are accessible without barriers, making the web an inclusive space that welcomes all.
“Accessibility is not an edge-case concern, it's the foundation of inclusion in a digital space.”
Designing for different abilities can help ensure your site is accessible to the full spectrum of human diversity; when content can be understood and used by all users within the spectrum of abilities, everyone benefits.
Accessibility is good for your brand
Ignoring accessibility has real-world implications, such as diminished public trust in brands.
Accessible design is good business: search engines reward semantic markup and pages that load quickly. Accessible sites repeatedly see enhanced SEO ranking, lower bounce rates, and a broader addressable market. Companies who include accessibility in their website early on save major costs on site reconfiguration and are able to create a design system that is easier to support and evolve.
How accessibility is measured
Accessibility is measured against the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The current standard, WCAG 2.2 (adopted October 2023) defines testable success criteria at three levels of standards: A (minimum), AA (industry standard), and AAA (enhanced).
By following WCAG on your website, you can help make sure that all visitors can read your content as much as possible. It’s important to choose color schemes with more than 4.5:1 contrast for text (and AA18 for large text), design items with focus styles (i.e. button hover states), add hierarchy heading structure, and alt text templates.
Why this matters to you
Designing your website accessibly isn't a "nice-to-have"; it's smart business “insurance”, extra marketing fuel, and a way to roll out the red carpet to prospective clients. By following the WCAG standards (clear text, high contrast colors, alt-text on pictures, and keyboard navigation) you can help ensure that you’ll show up higher on web searches, earn trust with a wider audience, including people with disabilities, and run a site that’s easier to keep fresh as your business grows.
How Wellfolk Design Co can help your site be accessible
As a seasoned UX designer, I follow WCAG accessibility standards in my template designs by:
Create and use high-contrast colors: I define and use a primary color palette that hits at least 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text. If you have an existing color palette that doesn’t allow for enough high contrast, I work with you to find solutions that work and stay within your brand guidelines.
Design proper text hierarchy: Specify H1, H2, and H3 hierarchy to follow when creating template content areas.
Provide alt‑text: For every image, I include short suggested alt text, or mark it “decorative” if it adds no meaning.
Thankfully, Squarespace has many accessibility guidelines baked into their code automatically - yay! And when you purchase a template from Wellfolk Design Co, I include a style guide so that you can continue building your brand online and making it accessible.
Check out accessible website templates in the Template Shop.
