Best practices for digital accessibility
How to make sure your digital content is accessible to everyone
An estimated 1 billion people worldwide live with disabilities or impairments, and for those who need support with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive needs, navigating the digital world can be challenging.
In 2026, it should be a no-brainer to have digital content that is accessible to all. Accessible tools are available to ensure people can easily consume content online – however, websites and social media content can often fall short on ensuring the content is accessible.
Legal requirements to ensure accessibility online
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) are a set of international standards designed to make digital content accessible for people with disabilities. It includes practical steps like adding text alternatives for images, ensuring readable colour contrast, enabling keyboard navigation, and using clear, consistent design.
These standards are built on four principles:
- Perceivable: Content must be presented to users in a way that they can consume content. Content needs to be seen, heard, and understood easily.
- Operable: Users should be able to use your online content using different input methods (Keyboard and touchscreen as well as a mouse).
- Understandable: Content is required to be clear, readable and predictable. Your content should be easy to navigate and behave consistently.
- Robust: The content must be interpreted reliably by a variety of user agents and assistive technologies. It needs to remain accessible as technology evolves.
With the European Accessibility Act (EAA) having come into effect in June 2025, digital accessibility was no longer just best practice, it became a legal requirement across the EU for many businesses, including those based in and trading within the EU.
Compliance helps brands avoid penalties and expand their audience. But most importantly it helps to make content accessible to all.
How to test your websites accessibility
To ensure your website and the content posted on it is accessible you should first test the website from the user’s perspective, accessibility testing should be a natural part of website testing before launching, or when carrying out updates.
You can do this by:
- Testing your website using free accessibility evaluation tools (we like the one provided by WAVE)
- Turn on a screen reader and navigate your website for 5-10 minutes (Windows and Mac both have built in tools)
- Navigate your website only using your keyboard
When testing your site ask yourself, could this be made easier? Is this the information we want people to hear/read? Is anything missing?
Once you have identified any issues you should begin rectifying immediately by amending content and/or code to ensure your content is accessible.
Steps to make sure your web content is accessible
Common accessibility issues include missing image descriptions, captions, low colour contrast, and unclear navigation. Here are some simple steps to help you create more accessible content:
- Add Alt text to images
Alternative text, commonly referred to as ‘alt text’, is how you can describe images. This is helpful to people who rely on screen readers; it also is important for SEO.
Most CMS systems (website editors) and social media platforms allow you to input text alternatives for images when uploading. These should always be filled in to ensure alt text is visible*.
When adding alt text, it’s important to ensure that the person who is consuming the content is aware of its intent, for example, if you have an image that contains text or a graph you should always include a written description in the alt text.
*There are some instances where images can be decorative and add no other purpose to the content. These could be confusing for someone using a screen reader – in these instances alt text should remain blank.
- Ensure colour contrast is suitable
Low colour contrast makes text and other key content harder to see.
For people with impaired vision, poor contrast can make words on a webpage difficult or even impossible to read. Avoid low-contrast combinations, as well as text that is too small or too thin.
You can test colour contrast with tools such as: WebAIM contrast checker, Colour contrast checker
- Create structured content
The structure of your content should make logical sense; reading orders should be intuitive and have clear structured indicators, such as headings, numbering, or bullet points.
Using properly structured hierarchy in your coding (on the website back end) will help screen readers (and SEO web crawlers) make sense of your pages easily. Ensure you use the appropriate practice of heading tags: H1, H2, H3 and so on.
- Use accessible language
The content you write should be easy to understand by everyone. Avoid overcomplicating text where it is not required. Accessibility guides encourage the use of clear and simple language.
It’s important, however, to always write for your audience. Avoid jargon that may be unfamiliar to most. If you must use specific acronyms or terminology, linking to a glossary can help users.
- Add descriptive links
Adding descriptive link text helps people know what to do with CTA (Call to Action) elements within your content. For example, “learn more” does not provide enough content to tell people what you’d like them to do, however “learn more about digital accessibility” helps communicate the purpose.
- Provide accessible multimedia
Visual media can create barriers for people with visual or hearing impairments.
When publishing video content, include captions, accessible transcripts where possible, and audio descriptions for key visual information.
Focus on information that is essential, so users are not overwhelmed with unnecessary detail.
- Make social media content accessible
Alongside your website content, you should make sure the content you publish across your social platforms is also accessible to all. To do this always consider the following:
- Add alt descriptions to images
- Provide visual descriptions in captions where relevant
- Avoid using too many emojis where they are not relevant (this can be frustrating for screen readers)
- Capitalise each word in a hashtag to make it easier to read for those with learning difficulties like Dyslexia and for screen readers
- Provide clear CTA (Call to Action) text when needed
Stay on top of accessible practices
Once you have made a start on creating accessible content, it’s important to continue the work every time you create new content for the web or social media. It Is also important to ensure that you are following the latest best practices and using new tools that may become available.
For help and advice, you can refer to the official guidance from accessibility charities and WCAG guidelines:
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (21st May 2026)
We can also help brands understand accessibility guidelines and make content changes that support compliance and improve accessibility for all.
