WCAG Basics Every Local Business Website Should Meet

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the technical standard behind most of what “ADA compliant website” actually means in practice — see our ADA website compliance guide for the broader legal context. This article breaks down the specific, practical requirements at the AA level most local businesses should aim for.

Key Takeaways

• WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the most widely referenced accessibility benchmark by courts and demand letters.
• Color contrast, keyboard navigation, alt text, form labels, and video captions cover most common gaps.
• Decorative images should use empty alt text so screen readers skip them, rather than being left out entirely.
• Every interactive site element needs to work without a mouse.
• Free tools exist to check contrast ratios and run basic automated accessibility scans.

Color Contrast

WCAG AA requires a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 between normal body text and its background, and 3:1 for larger text. Low-contrast text — light gray on white, for example, a common modern design trend — is one of the most frequently cited issues in accessibility audits, and also one of the easiest to fix using a free online contrast checker against the site’s actual brand colors.

Keyboard Navigation

Every interactive element on the site — navigation menus, dropdowns, buttons, form fields, and links — needs to be reachable and usable with just a keyboard, using Tab to move between elements and Enter or Space to activate them. This matters for users with motor impairments who can’t operate a mouse, and for screen reader users who rely on keyboard navigation as their primary method of moving through a page.

Alt Text on Images

Every image that conveys meaningful information needs descriptive alt text — a short, accurate description of what the image shows, written for someone who can’t see it. Purely decorative images should have empty alt text (not missing alt text) so screen readers correctly skip past them instead of reading a meaningless file name aloud.

Form Labels

Every form field needs a properly associated label, not just placeholder text that disappears once a user starts typing. A screen reader user relying only on placeholder text can lose track of what a field is asking for once they begin entering information, which is why a persistent, properly coded label matters more than it might seem for sighted users who don’t encounter this problem.

Heading Structure

A logical, consistent heading structure (one H1 per page, H2s for major sections, H3s for subsections, without skipping levels) helps screen reader users navigate a page efficiently by jumping between sections, the same way a sighted user might visually scan a page’s headings to find relevant content.

Video Captions

Any video with spoken audio or meaningful sound needs accurate captions, covering both promotional content and instructional or explainer videos. This also benefits users watching with sound off, which is a large share of social and mobile video viewing generally.

A Quick Self-Check

Element	Quick Test
Contrast	Run key text/background color pairs through a free contrast checker
Keyboard nav	Try navigating the whole site using only Tab and Enter
Alt text	View page source or use a browser extension to list images missing alt text
Form labels	Click into each field and confirm a label remains visible, not just placeholder text
Captions	Confirm every video with audio has accurate captions available

For guidance on whether an overlay widget can help address any of these automatically, see accessibility overlay widgets: do they actually work? — and for what to do if these gaps have already led to a demand letter, see ADA demand letters: what to do.

Beyond the Basics: A Few Frequently Missed Items

Beyond the core five areas above, a handful of secondary WCAG requirements catch even careful site owners off guard. Link text should be descriptive on its own — “click here” or “read more” repeated across a page fails screen reader users who navigate by pulling up a list of all links on a page out of context, where identical vague link text becomes meaningless. Auto-playing video or audio should be avoidable or muted by default, since unexpected sound can be disorienting for users relying on screen readers, which read page content aloud and can be drowned out. Timed content — session timeouts, rotating carousels, countdown-based promotions — should give users enough time to read and interact, or a way to pause or extend it, since some users need significantly more time to process content than the default timing assumes.

Testing Tools Worth Using

A few free or low-cost tools cover most of a basic self-check without hiring a specialist: browser extensions that run automated WCAG scans and flag common issues directly on a live page, standalone color contrast checkers, and simply unplugging the mouse for ten minutes to navigate the site using only a keyboard. None of these replace a full professional audit for a business facing real legal exposure, but they’re a legitimate, low-cost starting point for any local business that hasn’t looked at this at all yet — and they typically surface the same handful of high-frequency issues that show up in professional audits and in demand letters alike.

Platform-Specific Considerations

The starting point for WCAG compliance often depends heavily on what platform the site is built on. Modern website builders and content management systems increasingly include built-in accessibility features — proper heading structure, alt text prompts, contrast warnings — that reduce the baseline effort required. Older, heavily customized, or hand-coded sites tend to need more manual review and fixes, since they weren’t necessarily built with these standards in mind from the start. Understanding which situation applies to your site is a useful early step before estimating how much remediation work is realistically involved.