Web accessibility
Also known as: a11y
Web accessibility is the practice of designing and building websites that people with disabilities can perceive, operate, and understand.
In full
Web accessibility means building websites usable by people with visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, and neurological disabilities, including those using assistive technologies such as screen readers, magnification, voice control, and switch devices. In practice it covers sufficient colour contrast, meaningful text alternatives for images, form fields with proper labels, full keyboard operability with a visible focus indicator, captions for video, semantic HTML structure, and respecting a visitor's reduced-motion preference. Automated testing tools catch roughly a third of real issues, so manual checks such as navigating by keyboard alone remain necessary.
Why it matters
The same structural clarity that helps a screen reader also helps search engines and AI systems extract content, so accessibility work tends to improve machine readability as a side effect.
A common misconception
That an accessibility overlay widget solves it. Overlays are widely criticised by accessibility practitioners, do not fix the underlying markup, and can interfere with a visitor's own assistive tools.