Accessibility Fixes That Take Under an Hour
Accessibility work gets postponed because it's presented as a compliance project with a big number attached. Meanwhile the barriers that actually stop people are usually small, specific, and fixable today.
Here are eight, roughly in order of how much they matter.
1. Give every image a decision
Meaningful images get a description of what they're doing. Decorative images get alt="". What you're removing is the middle state — no alt attribute at all — which makes a screen reader read out the filename.
2. Make the focus indicator visible
Somewhere in most stylesheets is outline: none, added years ago because a designer disliked the ring. That single line makes the site unusable for anyone navigating by keyboard, because they can no longer see where they are.
Remove it. If the default ring is ugly, style :focus-visible into something you like. Never into nothing.
3. Fix contrast on body text and buttons
Light grey text on white is the most common accessibility failure on the web, and it's a one-value change. Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1; large text and interface components need 3:1. A contrast checker will tell you in seconds.
This one helps everyone — including you, on a laptop, outdoors.
4. Label the form fields
Every input needs a real <label> associated with it. Placeholder text is not a label: it disappears when someone starts typing, it fails contrast almost universally, and it isn't reliably announced.
While you're there, check that error messages are attached to the field they describe rather than floating at the top of the form.
5. Make links say where they go
"Click here" and "read more", repeated eleven times down a page, are meaningless to anyone navigating by a list of links. "Read the 2026 pricing guide" costs nothing extra and works for everybody.
6. Put the headings in order
One <h1> per page, then h2 for sections, h3 for subsections. No skipping levels, and no choosing a heading level because you liked its size — that's what CSS is for.
Heading structure is how a large share of screen reader users navigate a page. Scrambled headings are the equivalent of a shuffled table of contents.
7. Add a skip link
A single link at the top of the page, visible on focus, that jumps past the navigation to the main content. Without it, keyboard users tab through your entire menu on every page.
Five lines of code, and it's noticed immediately by the people who need it.
8. Stop anything that moves on its own
Auto-advancing carousels, auto-playing video, animations that loop. Provide a pause control, and respect prefers-reduced-motion — a media query that takes about three lines and honours a preference the visitor has already expressed at the operating system level.
What this doesn't do
It doesn't make you conformant, and it isn't a substitute for testing with real assistive technology. What it does do is remove the barriers that most commonly stop someone from using a site at all.
Start here, then keep going. Every one of these is permanent — unlike most website work, accessibility fixes don't decay.