Accessibility issues: is your website turning customers away?

Autumn 2026 edition of Your Business with James Caan, featuring Clive Loseby’s article on website accessibility.

Accessibility issues can stop someone buying from you before you ever know they were interested. A visitor reaches your website, finds the service they need and tries to take the next step, but a menu, form or booking system gets in their way. You see a quiet enquiry inbox. They experience a closed door.

In my article in the Autumn 2026 edition of Your Business with James Caan, I explain website accessibility through a simple idea: widening a doorway. This article develops that idea into practical questions for business owners who want their websites to welcome more people, rather than leave potential customers outside.

Imagine owning a shop with a doorway too narrow for a wheelchair user. Widen it and that person can enter. A parent pushing a pram, someone using crutches and a delivery driver carrying a large parcel may also find it easier. Removing one barrier can improve the experience for many people.

Your website deserves the same attention. The difference is that a digital doorway can look perfectly welcoming to its owner while remaining impossible for someone else to get through.

What are accessibility issues on a website?

Accessibility issues are barriers that make digital content or functionality difficult or impossible for disabled people to use. They can affect how someone reads information, navigates between pages, understands instructions or completes a task. Some are visible, such as text with insufficient contrast. Others become apparent when someone uses a keyboard, screen reader or another way of controlling their computer.

A website can look attractive, load quickly and work well for your team while still excluding customers. If everybody checking it uses a mouse, has similar vision and already knows how the booking system works, their experience gives you only part of the picture.

It helps to ask a practical question: can a customer find what they need and act on it independently? That might mean comparing services, requesting a quote, buying a product or simply finding your opening hours. Accessibility needs to support the whole journey.

The business cost of a doorway people cannot use

Businesses invest time and money in bringing people to their websites. Search optimisation, advertising, networking and recommendations all depend on what happens when somebody arrives. If the next step results in accessibility issues, some of that effort is wasted at precisely the moment it should produce a result.

Think about a prospective customer who reads your service page and decides to enquire. They reach your contact form, but its fields are not properly labelled for their screen reader. Or an error appears after submission without explaining clearly where the problem is. Their intention was there. Your website failed to help them complete it.

They may telephone, ask someone else for help or try a competitor. You cannot assume they will report the barrier. A business can therefore have very little accessibility feedback while still making things unnecessarily difficult for customers.

This is why I encourage owners to look beyond whether a website appears professional. The more useful question is whether it allows people to do business with you. A polished front window is of limited help if the door will not open.

Where customers can encounter barriers

Navigation that depends on using a mouse

Not everyone navigates with a mouse. Some people use a keyboard, switches, voice control or other assistive technology. If a menu opens only when a pointer hovers over it, or keyboard focus disappears into a component, important parts of the website can become difficult to reach.

Ask whether visitors can move through the page in a sensible order and tell where they are. A booking button needs to be reachable and operable, rather than merely visible.

Forms that leave people guessing

Forms are often the doorway between interest and an enquiry. Every field needs a clear purpose, instructions need to be understandable and error messages need to help people recover. A label that disappears as soon as somebody starts typing can make that harder.

A form should also communicate what happened after submission. Customers should not have to guess whether their request reached you, whether something went wrong or whether they need to try again.

Information that is difficult to perceive

Small, faint text can make essential information hard to read. Meaningful images need appropriate text alternatives, while videos may need captions and other alternatives depending on their content. Important instructions should remain available to people who cannot see or hear the original presentation.

This applies to promotional material too. A magazine spread is valuable for showing the published design, but readable webpage text gives visitors another way to access the message without having to enlarge and navigate a whole spread.

Outside systems that interrupt the journey

Your main pages may work well while an embedded booking calendar, payment service or newsletter form creates a barrier. From the customer's perspective, these are all part of dealing with your business. They are unlikely to distinguish between your website and a supplier's component.

Include these systems when reviewing the experience. Checking only the homepage can miss the point at which a visitor is actually trying to become a customer.

Why a software score cannot answer every question

Automated checks have a useful role. They can identify certain technical problems and help teams monitor changes. However, a report is only as useful as your understanding of what it has checked and what still needs human evaluation.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative's evaluation guidance explains that no tool alone can determine whether a website meets accessibility standards. A reassuring result should therefore begin a conversation about evidence, rather than bring that conversation to an end.

For a business owner, the distinction is straightforward. A tool can give you information about a page, but you also need to know whether people can complete the activities that matter. Finding a missing technical attribute and understanding a frustrating purchase journey are related tasks, with different kinds of evidence.

The same caution applies to any product presented as a complete accessibility solution. Ask what it changes, which barriers it addresses and how the result has been tested. A promise is much less useful than a demonstration of customers being able to use the service.

Four steps to address accessibility issues

1. Establish what is happening on your website

Start with evidence. A proper accessibility audit should help you understand the barriers, the people affected and the work needed to remove them. The outcome should be useful to the people responsible for making improvements.

Agree which pages and journeys will be reviewed. For one business, the priority may be a quote form; for another, a product purchase or appointment booking. Include the important stages and any outside services involved, so the review reflects how customers actually use the website.

2. Explain the current position honestly

An accessibility statement should tell visitors what you know about the website, which limitations remain and how to contact you for help. It should reflect evidence and actual arrangements, rather than a generic promise that everything is accessible.

Make sure somebody receives and responds to accessibility enquiries. An alternative contact route can help a customer with an immediate problem, while their feedback can reveal where further investigation is needed. Keep the statement under review as the website changes.

3. Make improvements that address the cause

Ask your web team to connect each recommended change to the barrier it removes. That makes it easier to prioritise work and verify whether it helped. A clear explanation also helps people recognise the same problem elsewhere.

Some faults come from a shared template or component, so a carefully implemented improvement may benefit many pages. Others sit in an individual document, image or piece of content. Understanding the cause helps you choose an appropriate fix and avoid repeating the problem when something new is published.

4. Involve disabled people and check the results

Technical evaluation and testing with disabled people provide complementary evidence. At Access by Design, our testing team includes screen-reader users, a tester with a hand disability and a tetraplegic tester who uses face-tracking software. Their experience helps show what a barrier means in practice.

Watching someone attempt a familiar task can change a team's understanding far more effectively than an unexplained list of errors. After improvements, check the affected journeys again. The aim is a better experience, rather than a report filed away as evidence that a review once happened.

What about the European Accessibility Act?

The magazine feature also discusses the European Accessibility Act. Its requirements began applying from 28 June 2025 to specified products and services. It is relevant to reviewing the accessibility of covered services offered to EU consumers.

Scope matters. The Act is not a blanket rule covering every website simply because somebody in the EU can visit it. The product or service, exemptions and applicable national rules need to be considered. The EU's business guidance on accessibility requirements provides an official starting point.

For this article, the practical point is wider than any single legal question. A customer struggling with your form needs the barrier removed. Even while you establish which requirements apply to your organisation, you can begin understanding whether your website welcomes the people who want to use it.

Make accessibility part of how you work

Websites change. New pages appear, staff upload documents, booking systems are replaced and developers release updates. An improvement made today can be undermined later if the people responsible do not understand what made it work.

This is where the doorway analogy becomes particularly useful. Once a team understands why a narrow entrance excludes people, they can consider access when designing the next entrance. The same applies to content editors choosing headings, designers specifying contrast and developers building forms.

Give those people practical guidance connected to their work. Agree who reviews new components, who checks important documents and who follows up on feedback. Accessibility becomes easier to maintain when responsibility is clear and people know what good practice looks like.

It also helps to keep a record of decisions and checks. If a supplier changes, your next team should be able to understand why something was built in a particular way. Preserving that knowledge supports future work and reduces the chance of paying to solve the same problem twice.

Questions to take to your web team

Start the conversation with a specific task, rather than a general request to make the website accessible. Ask your team to show how a visitor can request a quote without using a mouse, and how someone using a screen reader will understand the form. Ask what happens when that visitor makes a mistake.

Then ask what evidence supports the answers. Which parts have been tested, using which methods? Were the booking and payment systems included? Are there known barriers waiting for a supplier to resolve? These questions help turn a broad assurance into something you can understand and act on.

Discuss the content your own team adds as well. A well-built template cannot prevent every problem in a newly uploaded document or an image containing essential information. Editors need guidance they can apply during ordinary work, along with a clear route for asking questions when they are unsure.

Finally, agree how you will know the work is complete. A list of changes is useful, but checking the affected tasks again gives you better evidence of the result. Ask for explanations in plain English, so you can make informed decisions about your website without needing to become its developer.

Start with the doorway your customers need most

You do not need to understand every technical detail before taking a useful first step. Choose the journey that matters most to your business and ask whether disabled customers can complete it. Then establish what needs checking, who can help and how improvements will be verified.

My magazine article uses a physical doorway because the principle is easy to understand: when people want to enter, the entrance should allow them through. On your website, that entrance might be a contact form, a checkout or a booking calendar.

If you are concerned about accessibility issues on your website, book a free 15-minute consultation with Access by Design. We can discuss your website, your priorities and a sensible starting point. Email info@accessbydesign.uk or call 01243 776399.

Widening the doorway starts with finding out who cannot get through it.

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