5 Quick Accessibility Wins for Any Startup Website

You’ve launched your startup’s website and you’re excited to see people using it. But here’s the part that often gets overlooked: what if a quarter of those people can’t even use it? In the United States, about 1 in 4 adults lives with a disability. Globally, the World Health Organization estimates around 1.3 billion people experience significant disability, about 16% of the population. That’s not a niche group; it’s your customers, clients, and community. From my perspective as a digital accessibility researcher and marketer, I can tell you this isn’t just about doing the right thing, it’s about reach. An inaccessible site leaves people behind and leaves business on the table. The good news is accessibility doesn’t demand a huge budget or advanced tech skills. Most improvements are quick, practical, and often line up with the same best practices that make any website better. Here are five simple changes you can put into action today.

Add Alt Text to Images

Images are everywhere online, from product photos to blog graphics. But not everyone can see images. Alt text (alternative text) is a short description added to an image’s HTML tag so that screen readers can tell visually impaired users what the image contains. It’s a quick fix that makes a world of difference. For someone using a screen reader, encountering an image without alt text is like reading a book with missing pages - confusing and frustrating. By adding descriptive alt text to every important image, you makes certain that no one misses critical information. For example, if you have a photo of your product, alt text could be "Alt: Red running shoe with white sole and company logo on the side". Keep alt text concise but meaningful (usually one or two sentences). Avoid generic phrases like “image of” - screen readers already announce it’s an image. Instead, jump straight to describing what’s important. This practice not only aids accessibility, it can also give your site an SEO boost by telling Google what the image is about. Quick Win: Go through your site and add alt text for images, especially those showing products, charts, or key content. It takes only seconds per image, but opens up your content to a much wider audience.

Why it matters: Without alt text, a user who is blind or has low vision might hear a screen reader simply say “image” or a file name like “banner123.jpg” - which is utterly unhelpful. Adding alt text is like providing a tour guide for your visuals. As a bonus, search engines index alt text, which can improve your image search rankings. It’s a two-for-one benefit: you make your site friendlier and possibly attract more traffic via Google Image Search.

Use Sufficient Color Contrast (and Don’t Rely on Color Alone)

Have you ever struggled to read light gray text on a white background? That’s low contrast - and for many users, especially those with visual impairments or viewing on small screens, it’s a deal-breaker. Ensure your website’s text stands out against its background. Strong color contrast isn’t just a design nicety; it’s essential for readability. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) recommend a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text. In practical terms, dark text on a light background (or vice versa) works best. For example, black or navy text on a white backdrop is easy to read, whereas yellow on white is nearly invisible. Approximately 300 million people worldwide have some form of color vision deficiency (color blindness), particularly difficulty distinguishing certain colors. If your site uses color as the only way to convey information, those users could be left in the dark. For instance, making an error message text only red won’t be effective for a color-blind user - they might not notice it. Instead, pair color with text or symbols. Use an error icon or a label (“Error: Please enter a valid email”) in addition to color changes.

Quick fixes: Choose a high-contrast color scheme for text and background (tools like webaim.org’s contrast checker can help verify ratios). Also, audit your site for any place you say “green means go, red means stop.” Add a textual cue or icon so that even someone who can’t see the color difference will understand. For example, underline links in addition to coloring them, or include an exclamation mark icon next to error messages. These tweaks ensure everyone gets the message. Remember that about 1 in 12 men (and about 1 in 200 women) have some degree of color blindness - a sizable chunk of your potential users. By using good contrast and multiple visual indicators, you’re not losing that audience. In short, good contrast and thoughtful use of color make your site easier to navigate for those with visual impairments, and it tends to look cleaner and more professional for all users.

Make Your Site Keyboard-Friendly

Not everyone navigates a website with a mouse or trackpad. Some users rely on a keyboard alone - pressing the Tab key to jump through links and buttons - often due to motor disabilities or simply personal preference. A quick way to test your site: try putting your mouse aside and using Tab, arrow keys, and Enter to move through your site’s menus, links, and form fields. Can you access all interactive elements? If you encounter a menu that only shows on mouse hover or a form field you can’t select via keyboard, that’s a problem. Fixing this often involves ensuring your site’s code uses standard HTML buttons, links, and form inputs (which are inherently keyboard-accessible) rather than unconventional elements. Also, implement a visible focus indicator – this is the outline or highlight that shows which element is currently selected when using keyboard navigation. By default, browsers often show a little outline; make sure your site’s styles don’t disable it. In fact, design it to be clear (for example, a bright outline or underline on the focused link). A visible focus state lets a keyboard or switch device user know where they are on the page.

Why it matters: Many people with motor challenges (or even a broken mouse or a touchscreen user) depend on keyboard navigation. If they can’t access a feature without a mouse, it’s effectively broken for them. Imagine trying to fill a sign-up form but you can’t get the cursor into the “Email” field using Tab – you’d likely give up. Don’t lose those sign-ups! Ensuring full keyboard access is usually straightforward if your site is built on common frameworks or templates, but do a quick test to catch any oversights. This win might not be “glamorous,” but it’s critical. It also aligns with search engine expectations: a well-structured, keyboard-accessible site usually has cleaner HTML and better crawlability, which Google appreciates. In Google’s own guidelines, keyboard accessibility is a part of good web fundamentals. All in all, making your site work via keyboard means no one gets stuck - and that keeps users (and potential customers) from bouncing away in frustration.

Add Captions or Transcripts to Videos

Video content is fantastic for engagement - unless you can’t hear it. If your startup’s site includes video or audio (maybe a demo video, an introduction from the founder, or a promo clip), ensure there are captions or at least a text transcript available. Captions are the text that displays speech and important sounds in the video, usually at the bottom of the video player. They are indispensable for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. But here’s a secret: captions benefit everyone. A lot of us watch videos on mute - for example, checking a video at work or on the train (definitely not what you were thinking! xD). In fact, an estimated 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound (Not leaving you on trust me bro, this is a probable unofficial stat). And a recent survey found over half of Gen Z and millennials routinely use subtitles even when they have no hearing impairment. By providing captions, you’re accommodating people with hearing difficulties and the huge audience that simply prefers or needs quiet viewing. If it’s a talking-head explainer video, captions or a transcript will convey the message. If it’s more visual (like an app demo), consider adding audio descriptions – or at least make sure any spoken narration fully describes what’s happening on screen.

Implementing this: Many video hosting platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) offer auto-captioning – but auto-captions often need editing for accuracy. It’s worth the small effort to correct names or technical terms in captions. Alternatively, you can upload your own caption file or use a service to generate one. For short clips on your site, even providing a text summary or highlights below the video is better than nothing. The goal is that if someone can’t hear the audio, they can still grasp the content. Bonus: Search engines index text, so having a transcript or captions means the video’s content can actually boost your SEO (Google can’t index the words spoken in a video unless you provide text). And for marketing, consider that captions can increase engagement - viewers are more likely to watch a video to the end if captions are available (one study showed adding captions can increase comprehension and view duration significantly. The bottom line is that captions make your multimedia content more inclusive and more effective.

Ensure Buttons and Links Are Easy to Click (Touch-Friendly Design)

Ever try tapping a tiny link on a smartphone and accidentally hit the wrong one? Frustrating, right? That frustration is magnified for users with motor impairments or shaky hands. One quick accessibility win is to make sure all your clickable elements - buttons, navigation links, form checkboxes - are large enough and spaced well apart. Think of it as giving your users a big, friendly target to hit. A common guideline is a minimum tap target size of around 44 by 44dp for touch screens (about the size of a fingertip). If you have a sign-up button that’s the size of a pea, enlarging it and adding some padding can immediately improve usability. Also, add sufficient spacing between interactive elements. For example, if two buttons are right next to each other, a user might easily hit the wrong one - so give them some breathing room. Use clear, high-contrast styling for buttons so they don’t blend into the background (refer back to win #2 about color and contrast). Additionally, make link text descriptive and not too small. Descriptive link text not only helps users using screen readers (who sometimes tab through links and hear them out of context) but also improves SEO by giving context to search crawlers.

Why it matters: Whether it’s an older adult with limited dexterity, a person browsing on a small phone, or someone with a temporary injury (say, a bandaged finger), many users will struggle with tiny or tightly packed controls. By adopting a touch-friendly design, you’re essentially saying “welcome, we’ve made this site comfortable for you.” This is one of those fixes that also improves general user experience for everyone. No one has ever complained that a button was too easy to click! On the flip side, if your site’s interface is frustrating, users leave. Studies show that a significant share of users will abandon a website that is hard to navigate or slow to respond. For example, slow loading times cause users to drop off – 53% of mobile visitors leave a page that takes over 3 seconds to load - and similarly, if a page is too tedious to interact with, users won’t stick around. So, making your interactive elements accessible and easy is directly tied to keeping visitors engaged (and encouraging them to convert, whether that means signing up, purchasing, or reading more).

These five quick wins – adding alt text, improving color contrast, enabling keyboard navigation, captioning videos, and making click targets bigger - are often simple and low-cost to implement, yet their impact is huge. You’ll open your site to the roughly one billion+ people worldwide with disabilities, not to mention improving the experience for all users. Importantly for a startup, an accessible site can broaden your customer base and even improve your Google rankings (since accessible sites tend to have better structure and engagement metrics). You don’t need to tackle everything at once. Start with these quick fixes and you’ll already be ahead of many competitors - many sites still overlook accessibility, to their detriment. By building inclusivity into your website from the get-go, you’re not only doing the right thing ethically, you’re also making a smart business move. An accessible website welcomes everyone - and more happy visitors can only be a good thing for your startup’s growth.