What is website accessibility?
Definition
Website accessibility means building a website so people with disabilities can use it: people who are blind and use screen readers, who can't use a mouse, who have low vision or color blindness, or who are deaf and need captions. The most widely used yardstick is WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
What WCAG is, and where the ADA comes in
WCAG is published by the World Wide Web Consortium, the group that sets web standards. It groups its checks under four ideas: content people can perceive, controls they can operate, pages they can understand, and code that works with assistive tools. Each check has a level, A, AA or AAA, and AA is the level most organizations aim for. The current version is WCAG 2.2.
The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn't spell out website rules for private businesses, but the Department of Justice has said the websites of businesses open to the public should be accessible, and owners do receive demand letters and lawsuits over it. This page explains the ideas; it isn't legal advice. If you're worried about your site, talk to a lawyer who handles accessibility.
Accessibility is also about people you already serve. For churches, that's older members who enlarge the text and families who need captions on sermon videos. For dental practices, it's patients who book by keyboard or screen reader, so the booking form needs proper labels. For law firms, especially in injury or disability work, a consultation form a screen reader can't fill in turns away the people you serve.
Be wary of quick fixes. Widgets that claim one line of code can make any site meet the guidelines have drawn criticism from disability groups, and in 2025 the Federal Trade Commission ordered one such tool's maker to stop claiming it could. Real accessibility comes from how the pages are built and written.
Steps any owner can take
- Describe every meaningful photo in a short sentence (alt text); skip purely decorative ones.
- Use real headings, in order, so screen reader users can jump around the page.
- Make sure text stands out clearly from its background.
- Write link and button words that make sense on their own, never "click here".
- Give every form field a visible label, not just faint placeholder text.
- Caption your videos, and don't let anything play sound on its own.
- Try getting around your site with only the Tab and Enter keys.
How Future handles it
Future checks your text contrast against the guidelines' ratios and gives every image a description box, with a suggested description to start from. In the Builder you can change fonts and colors and check the phone layout, so you can make text larger and easier to read.
Future doesn't audit your site against WCAG or the ADA, and it can't promise that your site meets either one: what you add, from photos and videos to color choices and wording, matters too. For a formal review, hire an accessibility specialist, ideally one who tests with people who use assistive technology.