# AccelerateUX > Practical UX + accessibility guidance for small business owners to improve websites with confidence. Free guides, assessments, and curated articles. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About AccelerateUX URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/about/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T13:51:50.000Z ## Our work AccelerateUX helps small business owners and website managers improve their websites with clear, practical guidance—written for regular people, not full-time experts—so you can make confident changes, regardless of your teams resources or budget. We focus on the fundamental aspects of managing a successful website: **user experience, accessibility, conversions, and analytics.** [Explore free resource guides](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources) --- ## Our mission We strive to make digital experiences easier to create, manage, and improve; no matter your technical background. Great websites aren’t built once. They’re improved over time through small, informed decisions. AccelerateUX exists to help you learn what to look for, what to prioritize, and how to asses whether your changes actually worked. ### Built by an expert, for non-experts Everything we publish is designed to be: - Easy to understand - Actionable in real-world tools and platforms - Grounded in what real users need (and what real businesses can realistically implement). --- ## About our founder AccelerateUX was created by Molly Gertenbach; a designer, developer, and educator with 10 years of experience building high-performing digital web and mobile app experiences. After years of hearing the same questions—”Why aren’t people converting?”, “What does accessibility really mean?”, “How do I know what to fix first?”—Molly created AccelerateUX to share expert-level guidance in a way that’s practical, approachable, and built for busy teams. Our approach focuses on: - Clear explanations (no jargon, no fluff) - Frameworks for prioritization (so you don’t get overwhelmed) - Improvements that support both usability and business outcomes. [See our resources](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources) --- ## About our expert contributors We partner with experienced consultants and specialists to add depth and perspective across key topics like accessibility, UX strategy, analytics, and conversion optimization. ### Interested in sharing your expertise? If you’re a consultant or specialist interested in sharing your expertise, we’d love to hear from you. ### Explore Resources URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/ Last updated: 2026-07-14T17:58:46.000Z _No content available._ ### Accessibility at AccelerateUX URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/accessibility-statement/ Last updated: 2026-06-23T15:26:16.000Z # Accessibility at AccelerateUX ## Commitment AccelerateUX is committed to accessibility and inclusion. We want to encourage businesses of all types and sizes to evaluate and improve the accessibility of their digital experience. The Accessibility of our own website is core tenet of our goals and values, and we strive to ensure all users have equal access to the information we provide. To support accessibility, we: - Design and write content with clarity in mind. - Train and educate ourselves on accessibility practices. We continue learning through workshops and ongoing accessibility education. - Run regular automated accessibility tests to find common issues. - Conduct ongoing manual testing to improve real-world usability, including: - keyboard navigation (tab order, focus visibility, and access to controls) - screen reader experiences (structure, labels, and meaning) > Accessibility is not a one-time project, we treat it as a core of our ongoing web maintenance and platform development work. ## Conformance Status We use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA, as our reference standard for web accessibility. Our website has been tested and is recommended for: - Chrome - Safari - Firefox While this does not mean our website is incompatible with other browsers, we are unable to validate the usability and accessibility of AccelerateUX on additional browsers at this time. Manual testing to improve keyboard navigation and screen reader experiences is ongoing. We actively review key pages and features, to identify barriers and make improvements over time. --- ## Feedback If you find an issue or encounter a barrier to accessing AccelerateUX, please let us know at [support@accelerateux.com](mailto:support@accelerateux.com). We take reports seriously and use them to prioritize fixes. When you email us, please include: - The page URL - What you were trying to do - What went wrong - Your browser (Chrome/Safari/Firefox) and device - Any assistive technology you used (if relevant) ### Privacy Policy URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/privacy/ Last updated: 2026-06-23T16:04:48.000Z # Privacy at AccelerateUX ## Purpose The purpose of this privacy policy (this “Privacy Policy”) is to inform users of our Site of the following: 1. The personal data we will collect; 2. Use of collected data; 3. Who has access to the data collected; 4. The rights of Site users; and 5. The Site’s cookie policy. This Privacy Policy applies in addition to the terms and conditions of our Site. ## GDPR For users in the European Union, we adhere to the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”). For users in teh United Kingdom, we adhere to the GDPR as enshrined in the Data Protection Act 2018. ## Consent By using our Site users agree that they consent to: 1. The conditions set out in this Privacy Policy. When the legal basis for us processing your personal data is that you have provided your consent to that processing, you may withdraw your consent at any time. If you withdraw your consent, it will not make processing which we completed before you withdrew your consent unlawful. All personal information is collected by the Ghost platform for the purposes of delivering membership services and member’s only content. Member’s can manage or delete their personal data, or withdraw their consent by logging in their account at [my.ghost.org](http://my.ghost.org/?ref=accelerateux.com). ## Legal Basis for Processing We collect and process personal data about users in the EU only when we have a legal basis for doing so under Article 6 of the GDPR. We rely on the following legal basis to collect and process the personal data of users in the EU: 1. Users have provided their consent to the processing of their data for one or more specific purposes. ## Personal Data We Collect We only collect data that helps us achieve the purpose set out in this Privacy Policy. We will not collect any additional data beyond the data listed below without notifying you first. ### Data Collected in a Non-Automatic Way We may also collect the following data when you perform certain functions on our Site: 1. First and Last Name; and 2. Email Address. This data may be collected using the following methods: 1. Membership subscriptions 2. Email subscriptions ## How We Use Personal Data Data collected on our Site will only be used for the purposes specified in this Privacy Policy or indicated on the relevant pages of our Site. We will not use your data beyond what we disclose in this Privacy Policy. The data we collect when the user performs certain functions may be used for the following purposes: 1. To grant access to member’s only content and sent relevant member communication. ## Who We Share Personal Data With ### Employees We may disclose user data to any member of our organization who reasonably needs access to user data to achieve the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy. ### Third Parties We may share user data with the following third parties: 1. Fathom Analytics We may share the following user data with third parties: 1. User demographics and behaviors such as navigation and actions within the website. We may share user data with third parties for the following purposes: 1. Website analytics. Third parties will not be able to access user data beyond what is reasonably necessary to achieve the given purpose. ### Other Disclosures We will not sell or share your data with other third parties, except in the following cases: 1. If the law requires it; 2. If it is required for any legal proceeding; 3. To prove or protect our legal rights; and 4. To buyers or potential buyers of this company in the event that we seek to sell the company. If you follow hyperlinks form our Site to another Site, please note that we are not responsible for and have no control over their privacy policies and practices. ## How Long We Store Personal Data User data will be stored until the purpose the data was collected for has been achieved. You will be notified if your data is kept for longer than this period. ## How We Protect Your Personal Data We do not collect or store any data except for what is absolutely necessary, and requried by the Ghost Platform to provide membership content. While we take all reasonable precautions to ensure that user data is secure and that users are protected, there always remains teh risk of harm. The Internet as a whole can be insecure at times and therefore we are unable to guarantee the security of user data beyond what is reasonably practical. ## Your Rights as a User Under the GDPR, you have the following rights: 1. Right to be informed; 2. Right of access; 3. Right to rectification; 4. Right to erasure; 5. Right to restrict processing; 6. Right to data portability; and 7. Right to object ## Children We do not knowingly collect or user personal data from children under 16 years of age. If we learn that we have collected personal data from a child under 16 years of age, the personal data will be deleted as soon as possible. If a child under 16 years of age has provided us with personal data their parent or guardian may contact our privacy officer. ## How to Access, Modify, Delete, or Challenge the Data Collected If you would like to know if we have collected your personal data, how we have used your personal data, if we have disclosed your personal data and to who we disclosed your personal data, if you would like your data to be deleted or modified in any way, or if you would like to exercise any of your other rights under the GDPR, please contact our privacy officer here: [support@accelerateux.com](mailto:support@accelerateux.com) ## Do Not Track Notice Do Not Track (”DNT”) is a privacy preference that you can set in certain web browsers. We do not track the users of our Site over time and across third party websites and therefore do not respond to browser-initiated DNT signals. We are not responsible for and cannot guarantee how any third parties who interact with our Site and your data will respond to DNT signals. ## Cookie Policy A cookie is a small file, stored on a user’s hard drive by a website. Its purpose is to collect data relating to the user’s browsing habits. You can choose to be notified each time a cookie is transmitted. You can also choose to disable cookies entirely in your internet browser but this may decrease the quality of your user experience. We do not use Cookies on our Site. ## Modifications This Privacy Policy may be amended from time to time in order to maintain compliance with the law and to reflect any changes to our data collection process. When we amend this Privacy Policy we will update the “Effective Date” at the top of this Privacy Policy. We recommend that our users periodically review our Privacy Policy to ensure that they are notified of any updates. If necessary, we may notify users by email of changes to this Privacy Policy. ## Compliants If you have any complaints about how we process your personal data, please contact us at [support@accelerateux.com](mailto:support@accelerateux.com)so that we can, where possible, resolve the issue. If you feel we have not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner you may contact a supervisory authority. You also have the right to directly make a compliant to a supervisory authority. ### Terms and Conditions URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/terms/ Last updated: 2026-06-23T16:05:55.000Z # Terms of AccelerateUX ## Conditions of use By accessing this webs site, you are agreeing to be bound by these website Terms and Conditions of Use, all applicable laws and regulations, and agree that you are responsible for compliance with any applicable local laws. If you do not agree with any of these terms, you are prohibited from using or accessing this site. The materials contained in this website are protected by applicable copyright and trademark law. ## Privacy policy Before you continue using our website, we advise you to read our [privacy policy](https://app.notion.com/p/Privacy-Policy-387d7d446247806cb2d1cf464f345b08?pvs=21&ref=accelerateux.com) regarding our user data collection to better understand our practices. ## Age restriction You must be at least 18 (eighteen) years of age before you can use this website. By using this website, you warrant that you are at least 18 years of age and you may legally adhere to this Agreement. AccelerateUX assumes no responsibility for liabilities related to age misrepresentation. ## Intellectual property You agree that all materials, products, and services provided on this website are the property of AccelerateUX, its affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, suppliers, or licensors including all copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks, patents, and other intellectual property. You also agree that you will not reproduce or redistribute AccelerateUX’s intellectual property in any way, including electronic, digital, or new trademark registrations. You grant AccelerateUX a royalty-free and non-exclusive license to display, use, copy, transmit, and broadcast the content you upload and publish. For issues regarding intellectual property claims, you should contact the company in order to come to an agreement. ## User accounts As a user of this website, you may be asked to register with us and provide private information. You are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of this information, and you are responsible for maintaining the safety and security of your identifying information. All user accounts, personal information related to user accounts, and account credentials (username and password) are collected and managed by [ghost.org](http://ghost.org/?ref=accelerateux.com). AccelerateUX is not responsible for any activities that occur under your account or password, or issues regarding the security of your [ghost.org](http://ghost.org/?ref=accelerateux.com) account. We reserve all rights to terminate account access to AccelerateUX, edit or remove content and cancel orders at our sole discretion. ## Applicable law By using this website, you agree that the laws of the state of Pennsylvania, without regard to principles of conflict laws, will govern these terms and conditions, or any dispute of any sort that might come between AccelerateUX and you, or its business partners and associates. ## Disputes Any dispute related in any way to your use of this website or to products you purchase from us shall be arbitrated by state or federal court of Pennsylvania and you consent to exclusive jurisdiction and venue of such courts. ## Indemnification You agree to indemnify AccelerateUX and its affiliates and hold AccelerateUX harmless against legal claims and demands that may arise from your use or misuse of our services. We reserve the right to select our own legal counsel. ## Limitation on liability AccelerateUX is not liable for any damages that may occur to you as a result of your misuse of our website. AccelerateUX reserves the right to edit, modify, and change this Agreement at any time. This Agreement is an understanding between AccelerateUX and the user, and this supersedes and replaces all prior agreements regarding the use of this website. ### Frequently Asked Questions URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/faq/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T23:14:56.000Z ## Products & Purchases #### What kind of products do you sell? We sell tools designed help small business owners evaluate their website and guide them through a user experience process. Products are delivered in the form of a downloadable PDF and are available to purchase via Gumroad. #### Do I need a Gumroad account to make a purchase? Nope, a Gumroad account is not required to make a purchase. We recommend making an account as it will be easier to redownload the products and access your purchase history. #### How do I access/download my product after buying? You should receive a confirmation of your purchase and access to the product via your email. Additionally, if you have a Gumroad account you can view your purchase history and access purchases. #### Will I get an email with my download link? Yes, you should receive a confirmation from Gumroad with instructions on how to access and download the product. #### What if I lose my download link or delete the file? If you have a Gumroad account you should be able to access and re-download past purchases. If you do not have a Gumroad account, or can’t find record of the purchase, please email us for help at support@accelerateux.com. #### Can I redownload a product later if I need it again? Absolutely! You should be able to re-download the file from your original purchase confirmation, or access it from your Gumroad account (if you have one). ## Refunds & Support #### What's your refund policy? Due to the nature of our product we are not able to offer refunds on digital downloads. If you have any questions about how to utilize the product you’ve purchased or wish to provide feedback you can email us at support@accelerateux.com. #### What do I do if a file won't download or open? If you cannot download or open a file that you’ve purchased, please reach out to us for assistance at support@accelerateux.com. #### Who do I contact if I have a problem with my order? Please reach out to us at support@accelerateux.com. #### How long does it take to get a response to support requests? We try to respond to all messages within 2 to 3 businesses days. We are a small team, and this response time could be longer during busy periods. ## Usage & Licensing #### Can I use the templates/resources for client work or commercial projects? All resources, templates, tutorials, etc are available for use across personal and commercial projects. While you are welcome to utilize paid products in client work, we ask that you don’t share or distribute these files to other people. #### Can I share or resell what I purchase? No. All purchased materials are a single-license. Sharing or reselling of content and materials purchased from AccelerateUX is strictly prohibited. ### Get in touch URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/contact/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T22:19:27.000Z _No content available._ ## Posts ### Do small businesses really need a website? URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/blog/do-small-businesses-really-need-a-website/ Last updated: 2026-08-17T19:32:33.000Z ![A silver, apple brand laptop sits on a dark surface in a darkened space. The computer is partially opened, with a soft multi-colored background showing blues and pinks.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/7e/ac7e007d-bcd0-413e-af34-230badcb1975/content/images/2026/08/ales-nesetril-Im7lZjxeLhg-unsplash.jpg) We get why it's tempting to forego the traditional website—they cost money, they can be difficult to maintain, and there's really no such thing as an "easy-to-use" website builder. On the flip side, social media feels familiar and appears free. Your audience finds you, you get clients; what more would you really get from a website too? The short answer: a lot. Relying on social media as a replacement for a website can fundamentally limit your businesses reach and growth. ## Is social media enough for a small business? ### Social media platforms make you pay to play. Remember when you could actually scroll to the end of an Instagram feed, and your timeline only showed you posts from accounts you followed? These were the golden days of social media and building organic followings. In the past 12+ years, the rise of algorithm based feeds has created a monetization focus for social media platforms—and with it organic reach has plummeted. Since 2012, organic reach across major platforms has decreased by 85% or more. As companies increased personalization features and focused on platform engagement they created a system that forces brands to pay money if they want their content seen. To better illustrate the impact of this shift, take Instagram: with an average organic reach of 1.5% only 15 out of every 1,000 followers will ever see your content. ### Your audience isn't your own While it may feel like social media makes it easy to access your customers, this access can be fleeting. With no way to contact or communicate with your audience outside of social media these relationships are entirely at the mercy of an ever-changing algorithm. You can get banned or locked out of accounts with no way to access your audience—and if people choose to leave the platform they loose access to you in return. ### Having a website makes your business more trustworthy Just the existence of a website can increase a consumer's trust in a business and their perception of a brand's credibility by 41%. Interestingly, while behaviors and trends on social media are traditionally driven by younger demographics, they're also the most resistant to purchase from brands without a website. 72% of 18-24 year olds feel that a business looses credibility if it does not have a website. Consumers tend to trust the information published on a website as being the most accurate, with 58% of users relying on websites to confirm information they saw on social media. ## Why small businesses need to have a website ### A website increases your business's visibility and reach Relying on social media limits your audience to that platform's active user base, and further limits the actual reach of your content. While growing your website traffic may feel less immediate than social media—it ultimately allows you to reach a far greater audience. A whopping 99% of consumers rely on the internet to discover local businesses. Having a website allows your business to appear in search results and be found. ### Customers feel safer spending money on websites While shopping integrations are widely integrated across social media platforms consumers average spend is almost 400% higher on websites as compared to purchases made through social media. Websites help drive *more* purchases as well. 45% of consumers between the age of 18 and 44 have actually chosen not to visit or purchase from a business specifically because it lacked a website. ## Why your business needs social media and a website The bottom line is that while relying on social media as a replacement for a website will hurt your business, you shouldn't scrap your social accounts all together. This isn't a one or the other situation. Even with declining reach, social media is still a powerful tool for discovery; especially when leveraged as a paid advertising platform. A website however gives your business, and business information, a permanent home—and a place to provide greater depth from which they can make a purchasing decision. When combined, businesses with both a website and a presence on social media generate roughly twice the revenue of businesses relying solely on social channels. ### Accessibility URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/accessibility/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T14:04:48.000Z Despite there being a growing awareness around the topic, digital accessibility is still one of the most overlooked aspects of the internet, and for many business’s websites. Commonly misunderstood and dismissed as a niche concern, the implications of ignoring digital accessibility can be far-reaching and significant. Accessibility affects far more of your customers than you have likely imagined, and ignoring it carries both legal and business risk. ## Web accessibility is so important we have an entire resource section dedicated to the topic. [ Go to the accessibility resource ](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/) ## What is web accessibility? Web, or digital accessibility is the process of designing and building a website that can be used by people with a wide range of abilities. Included in this, but not limited to, is ensuring support for visual impairments, hearing loss, motor limitations, and cognitive differences. We often hear people expressing concern that having an accessible website means it will be boring, or lack brand personality—but that is not the case. Accessible design doesn’t mean having a separate or “flavorless” version of your website, it just means making sure that website works for everyone. ### Who does web accessibility affect? Like we mentioned above, web accessibility is not a niche issue. In fact, 1 in 4 United States adults live with some form of disability. Not to mention, accessibility improvements can also aid users dealing with situational limitations such as bright sunlight, a broken hand, older devices, or even slow connections. Older poplulations, and individuals dealing with common conditions like color-blindness or poor eysight will also benefit significantly from accessibility-minded design. At the end of the day, ensuring you have an accessible website is one of the best things you can do for *all* of your users and their overall experience—regardless of their disabilities or lack there of. ### The legal and business risk The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) stipulates web accessibility as a requirement for businesses and has been applied to an increasing number of lawsuits in recent years. With web accessibility lawsuits increasing significantly in the past decade there is growing attention and awareness on sites that are inaccessible. It’s increasingly important to begin focusing effort on improving your website’s accessibility *before* it becomes a problem. --- ## How accessibility and SEO overlap In addition to the legal requirements and overall experience improvements gained through accessible design, many web accessibility best practices have a direct impact on a website’s SEO (Search Engine Optimization) rankings. These impacts can include the following: ### 1\. Alt text on images: Alt text allows screen readers to describe images to visually impaired users *and* helps search engines better index your website content. ### 2\. Clear heading structure: Ensuring your content follows appropriate heading structures helps users who rely on assistive technology to both navigate and to understand the hierarchal importance of information they consume. It is also critical for search engines to understand and properly index page content. ### 3\. Descriptive link text: Descriptive link text improves navigation with screen readers *and* provides valuable context to search engines. --- ## Common mistakes The following issues are some of the most frequently overlooked aspects of a website, and some of the easiest accessibility issues to improve on: - Missing alt-text on images - Low contrast text colors that re difficult to read - Hiding form labels—or removing them when the user enters a value - Missing captions on videos - Blocking or limiting the ability to navigate a website via the keyboard (using tab and enter keys) - PDFs that are not configured to support screen readers --- ## Where to start ### 1\. Run an automated audit: Use a free tool like [Google Lighthouse](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse?ref=accelerateux.com) or [WAVE](https://wave.webaim.org/?ref=accelerateux.com) to generate a list of accessibility issues on your website. While these tools cannot identify every accessibility issue they will help to spot and sometimes fix major issues, making them a good starting point for improvements. ### 2\. Focus on the easiest fixes first: Issues like color contrast, alt-text, and form-labels are common problems that are typically easy-to-identify and easy-to-resolve yourself. Start by fixing these issues as you work to identify and rectify additional accessibility issues. ### 3\. Make new content accessible from the start: Whenever you create or add new content to your website—such as images, videos, and PDFs—make sure your adhering to accessibility best practices in their creation and development. It’s much easier to add alt-text to new images as they are individually added to a website that it is to have to go back and add it to every image on the site down the road. ### 4\. Budget for additional support The best way to ensure you’re meeting legal compliance is to hire an expert to help you identify and correct outstanding issues. While you can absolutely make some major improvements on your own, you should consider budgeting for a professional accessibility audit to reveal additional issues and double check your improvements were made correctly. Depending on the frequency with which you update your website you may consider hiring ongoing support, or conducting accessibility audits on a routine cadence. Don’t be afraid—while the initial effort may seem like a lot of work, implementing accessibility best practices for new content and conducting ongoing accessibility checkups will make maintaining your website’s accessibility significantly easier. ### Design systems URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/design-systems/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:09:29.000Z While a design system might sound like something only big companies need, it isn’t. Any business with a website or other digital presence van benefit from having one. Even a simple design system will make your website more professional and easier to maintain. Across the board, user’s notice and can be greatly impacted by consistency—even if they’re not consciously aware of it. A lack of consistency across your brand can damage trust and negatively impact your conversions and retention. The best way to establish consistency across your website is through a design system. --- ## What a design system actually is If you’ve already invested in a brand identity you may assume you already have this covered. While there can be overlap between brand identities and design systems, their function is distinctly unique. Your brand identity likely defines things such as, but not limited to: - Your logo, it’s acceptable variations, and how it should be used. - The colors that define your brand and rules regarding how they may be combined or paired together. - Other stylistic and design elements like iconography, photography styles, etc. A brand identity falls short in defining how that brand is implemented across a full digital ecosystem. This is where a design system takes over. A design system typically provides explicit definitions for how your brand should be rendered across the individual components of a website such as buttons, links, web-based typography, navigation elements, interactive states, and more. While a design system can get very granular its function is to ensure that, for example, every time a button appears on your website it’s the same size, color, font, weight, etc—and there’s never a question of what those definitions are supposed to be. ### Core components of a design system - **Color palette:** Built upon the palette defined in your brand identity, the design system color palette should identify the specific colors used, and their roles, within the context of your website. A design system color palette should identify accessible color pairings and deliniate between your brand colors vs. more system-level values that would be used for things link errors, confirmations, alerts, etc. - **Typography:** Expanding on the font family’s defined in the brand identity, the design system should define how font’s are used across the website. This may include defining which font family is used in headings vs. body copy; and defining a hierarchal scale of font-sizes and weights that are available. - **Buttons, links, and actions:** The design system should define what these elements look like, how they behave, and how they transform when interacted with. A design system should define the different variations of these items—such as primary vs. secondary buttons—and set rules that make it clear how and when to use them. - **Spacing and layout:** Defining values for consistent padding, margins, and the maximum width of content on a website ensures it will have a consistent structure. --- ## What happens without a design system? Without a clear and easily reviewable source for documenting the design “rules” of your unique site you’ll wind up re-defining these components every time you add new content or update the site. Without a design system, if you have multiple people working on one site they’ll be free to make decisions based on their own personal preferences, instead of brand defined rules. Without a design system, it’s likely that you’ll start to see that pages built or updated at different times look disconnected; they may even feel as if they belong on different websites. When your components change across your website—headings are one font on some pages but different fonts on others—without any consistency or intentionality, the inconsistencies indicate a lack of attention to detail. Your visitors will notice and may begin to doubt the professionalism, trustworthiness, or seriousness of your business because of it. As a bonus, having a design system will make it faster and easier to maintain and expand your website later on. Every new addition to your site requires decisions that should have already been made and documented in your design system—allowing you to save the time that would have been sent remaking those decisions, or trying to figure out what you’ve done previously each time. --- ## Common misconceptions ### **Myth:** If you already have a brand guide you’re already covered. **Reality:** A brand guide covers broader definitions and should set the visual and linguistic tone of your brand. A design system is is what governs how those standards are actually applied across every element of your website. ### **Myth:** Design systems are only relevant for large teams. **Reality:** Even a solo, small business owner, will benefit from having documented rules to follow when updating their website. ### **Myth:** Our website builder handles this automatically **Reality:** Most web builders provide a starting point to define some global styles across website elements, but customizations and point-of-use overrides made over time can drift from that baseline unless you define intentional standards. --- ## Where to start While a professional with design systems experience can be a great resource in properly defining your standards the following items are things you can easily do yourself. These actions will help you start making design system decisions; improving your website’s consistency, and becoming more intetional about your design decisions. 1. **Document what already exists:** Open your website and take note of every color, font, and button style currently in use. Dropping screen shots into a white-boarding tool to annotate these different values is a great way to keep track. 2. **Identify inconsistencies:** They might be pretty obvious, but keep an eye for things like inconsistent colors, changing fonts, and shifting font sizes. 3. **Make decisions and write them down:** Go through the varied elements and style inconsistencies you’ve documented and start deciding which instances should be the “correct” ones. Record these decisions so you can begin to know explicitly what your primary color vs. secondary color, heading font vs. paragraph font, and button vs. link styles are. Use the resulting document as your initial design system, and make sure to reference it every time you update the site. If you use a website builder it likely has a global style or brand settings panel in which may be able to define some of these basic style decisions for the site as a whole. #### Want help auditing and defining a starting point for you design system? We can help with that. [Get in touch ](#tally-open=5BDMVM&tally-layout=modal&tally-overlay=1&tally-emoji-animation=none&reference=interest%3A%20design%20system%20support) ### Responsive Design URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/responsive-design/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:09:10.000Z Another term that’s frequently mentioned and less frequently discusses, it’s easy to get confused on where the differences between [mobile-first design](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/mobile-first-design/) and responsive design lie. While mobile-first design is more of the philosophy and mental shift to prioritizing the mobile version a website, responsive design is the actual process of defining how your website changes across differently sized screens, or transitions when a user resizes a web browser. Understanding the how and why of responsive design can feel complicated and technical, but the fundamentals are actually straight-forward. Taking the time to better understand responsive design will help you gain a better understanding of what your site needs, and help you make smarter decisions about your website as a whole. --- ## What is a responsive website? In short, to be “responsive” means that the layout of a website should automatically adjust based on the size of the screen displaying it. This does not mean simply shrinking or enlarging the contents of your website at scale — like you would if you zoomed a picture in or out. Rather, it means ensuring that the website remains readable and usable as the screen adapts. This can involve shrinking and scaling certain assets (like images), changing margins or text sizes at certain points, and even changing the orientation or layout of content on the page. Similar to how water expands or contracts to fit the vessel it’s poured into, the browser is the vessel in which your website needs to flow and fill at any size. Without responsive design websites could only display at a single fixed size, breaking on any smaller view. This used to be the reality of the internet, pre-mobile devices, where websites were static. Now however, responsive design is a standard and must for any modern site. ### An extension of mobile-design While mobile-friendly design highlights the importance of the mobile version of a website, responsive design is about the mechanics by which a desktop site transforms into a mobile version, and back again. Taking the AccelerateUX website as an example, you can load and view the site on both mobile and computer browsers—and we’ve used our [adaptive design philosophy](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/mobile-first-design/#the-adaptive-approach) to create an experience that is effective in both situations. If you look at this website on a computer and resize the browser window—play around with making it smaller and larger—you should see the contents and layout on the page dynamically shifting and resizing to appropriately fill the space. This is the outcome of responsive design in practice. ### Breakpoints One of the more technical aspects of responsive design, breakpoints are specific points at which more significant layout changes occur. One the development side, when implemented, breakpoints allow you to update whole sets of website styles to be applied under certain conditions—enabling you to hide/show elements at a certain window size, or change paddings and font-sizes for different sets of devices. Breakpoints are typically used to enact these changes at designated points that represents the size at which a desktop experience changes to a tablet experience, and then into a mobile experience. The following are the major breakpoints used within the AccelerateUX site. While additional breakpoints may be needed to created a truly seamless responsive experience, these values represent the minimum and maximum values we use to align our designs to device types. | Device | Breakpoint | | ------- | -------------------- | | Desktop | screens above 1024px | | Tablet | 600px to 1024px | | Mobile | screens below 600px | ## What happens when you ignore responsive design If you ignore your website’s responsiveness—or rely on website builders without testing it further, your site may experience the following issues: - Text and images that overlap, get cut-off, or extend off the screen. - Navigation menus that collapse into an unusable state and impede a user’s ability to see or select the menu items. - Form inputs and buttons that are too small to interact with. - Content that requires horizontal scrolling to read or view—one of the fastest ways to lose visitors on your site. - Inconsistent experiences that make your business feel unpolished and unprofessional, and damage trust and credibility of your brand. --- ## Common misconceptions about responsive design ### 1\. Assuming a web-builder automatically optimizes across devices. Even if you define how your website should look in the primary tablet and mobile preview your web-builder may do some weird things in the views between these major breakpoints. Make sure that your checking your website in a mobile browser and resizing the browser window to see how your website responds. Pay attention and make note of any points that the experience seems to break at. ### 2\. Checking your website on one phone, and assuming it will work on every phone. Almost every smartphone model, and even versions of models, have a slightly different screen size. While newer devices have higher resolutions and larger screen sizes there are a significant number of older, and smaller, devices in use. Even if your website looks great on your own phone you want to try to view it on a few different devices. You can ask friends or family members with different phones to pull your website up—or use tools that are built into your computer browser to “emulate” your website on different sizes of devices. \[add link to a blog post providing instructions on how to do this?? or paywalled member step-by-step guide??\] ### 3\. Forgetting to check new content across devices Don’t forget, just because your site is responsive now, doesn’t mean that any new content or changes you make will automatically stay responsive. Every time you make an update or add new content to your website don’t forget to check your tablet and mobile views to make sure everything still renders correctly. ### 4\. Thinking a responsive framework guarantees a responsive output Even if you’re using a responsive template to build a site you have to consciously and proactively ensure that your site *stays* responsive as you build it. --- ## Testing your responsive website Checking your website across devices is important, but it doesn't need to be overwhelming or scary. ### Test on multiple decices Checking on a single phone or tablet doesn’t mean there’s not problems on other screen sizes. Try to look at your website on various physical devices, as much as you’re able to do so—or use browser tools and device emulators as an alternative. ### Test what happens when you resize your browser While big layout shifts happen at designated breakpoints your website should not be static between them. On a computer, load your website and resize your browser window to see what happens. Make sure your website is fluidly resizing and adapting in ways that support the experience, are visually cohesive, and protect the usability of its elements. ### Test every page When testing, make sure you’re going further than the homepage or key landing pages. Try to pull up every page, or an instance of every page type—for instance, you don’t need to test every blog post, but your should be testing at least one of each blog post template your website uses—and resize it to spot any issues. Interior pages, contact forms, and blog posts can be easily overlooked. #### Struggling to evaluate how your site appears across devices? We offer a checkup for that. [Get in touch ](#tally-open=5BDMVM&tally-layout=modal&tally-overlay=1&tally-emoji-animation=none&reference=interest%3A%responsive%20checkup) ## How to proceed Responsive websites—that just work, no matter the device—are not a nice to have, they’re a must to have. The first step is evaluating where your site is today and what you need to do to establish a responsive baseline. Eventually the goal is not just if your site is responsive, but how well it responds and adapts to the specific needs and expectations posed by different devices. Once you establish a responsive website try to make small adjustments to your process of planning, implementing, and reviewing site changes. Make casual testing a part of your maintenance plan to catch problems on your site before your visitors do. ### Landing Pages URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/landing-pages/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T14:12:31.000Z Your homepage doesn’t have to do everything. A lot of businesses, especially those without the resources to hire dedicated marketing teams, default to sending all their traffic to the homepage. A landing page is a valuable, and underutilized tool—understanding the difference and the different strengths it offers can change your entire online process. --- ## What is a landing page A landing page is, typically, a standalone page built around a single goal (often referred to as a campaign) and a single audience. Landing pages are so goal oriented they oftentimes go so far as removing the standard site navigation—eliminating distractions so the user is focused on the single action you want them to take. ### How a landing page is different than your homepage A homepage is meant to introduce your entire brand and business; it is representative of multiple goals and needs to serve multiple objectives depending on the individual user or specific audience. By contrast, a landing page cuts out the noise and speaks to a specific set of users about one single, specific, relevant-to-them *thing.* When you send everyone to the same homepage, you make every visitor do the work to determine what’s relevant to them, or to hunt for the offer that brought them to the site. ### The anatomy of a landing page The necessary components of a landing page come down to three items: a clear headline, a tailored message, and a single call to action. You can add supportive content such as a hero image, demo video, supporting sub-headings and copy, social proof, features, and benefits. Whatever you add however should be hyper relevant to your target audience and the specific goal of that landing page—if you dilute this focus you’ll weaken its impact. ### When a landing page makes sense Landing pages are often used by bigger brands during partnerships or ad campaigns. Even small businesses can get value from strategically using landing pages. While there is still value in sending general traffic to your homepage you might want to consider using a landing page in the following scenarios: - Running paid advertising such as google or meta ads on specific demographics - Promoting any kind of specific offer, special deal, or event. - Capturing email signups or leads for a specific audience. - Following up on a referall, lead, or potential partnership with a tailored message. - Any scenario where you can identify a visitor will be arriving on your site with a specific intent. --- ## Common mistakes ### 1\. Sending ad traffic to the homepage Directing ad traffic to your homepage is likely to result in low conversions. Instead, try to setup dedicated landing pages for your campaigns that reinforce and back up its key message. ### 2\. Showing your full site navigation on a landing page Remember, the purpose of a landing page is to focus the user on the singular, isolated objective that led them there in the first place. Retaining your full navigation gives your user an opening to distraction—and invites them to go off of this primary path. ### 3\. Writing the page for everyone, instead of a specific individual Your landing page isn’t meant to be relevant to everyone and it shouldn’t try to be—that’s what your homepage is for. By trying to appeal to too many people at once you’re diluting the impact of its message for the audience it was meant for. ### 4\. Measuring success by traffic instead of conversion There’s value in both metrics, and the number of how *many* people you are driving to a landing page can be indicative of the success in your referring ad campaign, email, or post. At the end of the day however, the number of people who *see*your offer doesn’t really matter, the number of people who convert does. Your conversion rate is the number of people who actually take the action your landing page is pushing them to take—be it singing up, or buying your product. ### Information Architecture URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/information-architecture/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T14:52:16.000Z There’s a lot of discussion surrounding User Experience and the need to have an “intuitive” website. In this context, intuitive refers to a user’s ability to come to a website for the first time and easily find their way around without any effort, struggle, or really having to think about the actions they’re taking. The intuitiveness of an website’s navigation is often evaluated through usability testing, but it is created through information architecture (IA). IA is often the least visible part of the UX process, but it’s one of the most impactful—most navigation and discoverability problems within a site can be traced back to issues with the IA. --- ## What is information architecture? In simple terms IA is the practice of organizing, labeling, and structuring content in a way that makes sense and enables people to find it. Unlike visual aspects of the design process your website’s information architecture is the structural system of logic and organization on which everything else is built. To help illustrate the function and impact of IA think of a grocery store. It is information architecture that determines which products belong in which product categories, and which product categories should be grouped into an aisle together. In a physical space such as this the IA establishes how these aisles are labeled, what categories are highlighted on signage, and how easy it is to find additional services like customer service, checkout, and even restrooms. As soon as you put a single item of content or information on a website, you’ve created an information architecture—which is why it’s important to make sure you’ve done so deliberately by determining what best fits the needs of your website and the expectations of its users. --- ## Information architecture core components While the needs of a website’s information architecture can be varied, the following items make up some of the major aspects that any IA should consider and solve for: ### 1\. Organization A comprehensive IA should define rules for how content is grouped and categorized. This can include defining different types of content, relationships of categories and tags for content, and how similar content is related or differentiated from each other. When drafting up your plan for your website’s content organization consider not just the content you have today but the type of content you plan to have in the future. For example, do you plan to launch a blog at some point? Will it be one blog, or will there be different types of blogs on your website? Will this plan for your website’s organization allow you to easily add this blog content, or would you have to redo it? ### 2\. Labeling This defines the words that are used to describe the groups in which content is organized. Labeling can include specifying the categories and tags available to be used or defining navigation items, page titles, and section headers. Labels should be clear, descriptive, and representative of the content it contains or action the user is about to take. Once you define a label make sure to consistently use the correct one—don’t refer to the items as different things in different places or you may confuse your audience. ### 3\. Navigation This is the system users employ to move through a website—ie. a menu. IA is responsible for establishing top level vs. secondary level relationships to navigation items as well as separating out primary vs. secondary and global vs. section level systems of navigation. The more complex a website is the more critical it becomes to have a well defined information architecture and system of navigation. ### 4\. Search Especially important for content heavy or complex websites, offering search capability provides an important fallback for users to find information when browsing the website fails them. Having a useful search is more than simply installing a basic plugin. A well designed search function should have its own information architecture considerations including but not limited to: - How are results organized - What filters are relevant and useful ### 5\. Hierarchy Last but not least in this list, everything mentioned above should be impacted by decisions you make regarding the hierarchy of the information on your website. These decisions define what information is most important, what is secondarily important, and so on—as well as how that priority is communicated both structurally and visually. --- ## How to evaluate your information architecture Whether or not you built your website yourself, you likely played a significant role in defining how it turned out and what content went into it. As such, it will be almost impossible for you to personally judge the effectiveness of its IA, since you already know where everything is. This curse of knowledge is one that presents itself often in user experience, and impacts everyone—business owners, stakeholders, designers, developers, and anyone else with intimate knowledge into the website or business. As a result, the decisions you’ve made will often feel completely obvious and logical, but may not be as clear to someone outside of the business operations. This is why gathering outside feedback—whether through usability testing, or friends and family less familiar with the website—is invaluable when auditing your navigation and evaluating IA decisions. ### Tools to audit When evaluating your webiste’s information architecture try to do the following: 1. Write down every page in your website. For each one, ask yourself what job it performs, goal it achieves, or value it provides. 2. Ask someone unfamiliar with your business and website to find three specific pieces of information. Ask them to vocalize their thought process, out loud, as they go—make sure you observe and take notes, and try to avoid providing any hints or assistance. 3. Take a look at your site analytics and see what pages have high exit rates. Often, but not always, these pages can indicate places where the IA is failing. ### Common mistakes The following items are easy-to-make mistakes we see frequently. Paying special attention to these items when evaluating your own IA will help you identify some starting points to make improvements: - Using industry jargon your visitors may not be familiar with for navigation labels. - Having too many top-level menu items that compete for attention—remember, if everything is important than nothing is important. - Burying important pages two or three levels deep. - Organizing content around the structure of your business *instead* of how customers think about your product or service. - Missing a clear path from the homepage to the most important conversion. --- ## How users look for information While the best IA will ultimately be unique to your business, website, and users; there has been a lot of research into the way people process information that can be leveraged to make some common assumptions when defining your IA. 1. Most of your visitors won’t read everything. They’ll scan the page, looking for familiar landmarks that indicate they’ve found whatever they were looking for. 2. Most users will follow the path of least resistance to accomplish their task, but will quickly abandon it if they hit [friction](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/friction/). 3. The language your audience uses to search for your product or services is often different than the language you use to describe them. Make sure your navigation labels reflect how your customer talks—not how you talk. ### Friction URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/friction/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T14:12:58.000Z In physics, friction is resistance that slows movement. Online, friction is any point in an experience where a user might hesitate, get confused, or entirely give up. The cause of friction is anything that slows a user down, creates confusion, or makes them work harder then they should to complete a task. In regards to UX, friction is often mentioned as something to avoid at all costs; the cause of poor conversions, low retention, and other issues. As a reminder, your proximity to your own website and business makes it harder for you to identify friction yourself. Your customers may experience friction at points that seem completely intuitive to you—it’s important to keep that in mind when evaluating your website or a user flow for friction points. --- ## Is friction always bad? No—despite the overwhelming emphasis on reducing clicks and removing friction, friction is not *always* a bad thing—only unintentional friction is. ### Unintentional friction Unintentional friction is any pain point or complexity that is negatively impacting your user’s experience. These friction points are slowing down users in ways that they don’t want or need to be impeded—and will likely impact your conversions and user retention. We cause this friction “unintentional” because its rare that you would have made decisions that would knowingly harm your user’s experience. ### Intentional friction There are not-uncommon scenarios in which friction is actually necessary for a good user experience. There are obvious examples like requiring a confirmation before completing a purchase, deleting information, or performing any other “critical” or “destructive” action. Adding intentional friction points—or “speed bumps”— is a valuable tool whenever you have a point where it’s in the user’s best interest to slow down. If you notice trends in customers providing incorrect information, or experessing confusion related to the details of a product or service post-purchase, it may be indicitive that your experience is actually too efficent; users are missing or misunderstanding the process. Exploring intentional friction can be a strategic tool to focus your users onto an important piece of information, re-enforce intent, or prevent mistakes. --- ## The compounding impact of friction Bugs happen and integrations have constraints—it’s unlikely that without an unlimited budget you’ll ever have a 100% friction-free site. Even then, all technology comes with some form of limitation and those limitations can create friction points out of your control. What you shouldn’t do is panic over these unavoidable friction points. A single friction point is tolerable, and users will push through it. However even if instances of friction are individual and isolated, their impact is not. The impact of multiple friction points stack; each new point of friction increases a users frustration and their risk of abandonment. Once a user hits their threshold the friction will no longer be worth pushing through, and they’ll leave the experience—this is the point at which you want to prevent users from ever having to reach. This impact of compounding friction is why conversion problems are rarely caused by one single big issue. Rather, they are the result of many small ones. Take the following scenarios: you visit a restaurant where you’re presented with a confusing menu, your dish comes out wrong, and the bill has a charge for something you never ordered—individually these issues could all be forgivable mistakes, but together they might make you unlikely to return. ### Common sources of friction The following items are some of the most common issues we spot on websites, and can be used as easy points to begin making improvements to reduce friction: - Presenting too many choices at one time without providing clear direction. - Vague or missing call-to-actions that leave your user uncertain about where they should proceed. - Long or unnecessary form fields that collect infomration you don’t yet need. - Slow load times—even milliseconds can cause users to leave and cost valuable conversions. - Requiring an account before allowing a customer to make any purchase or inquiries. - Broken links, outdated information, or flows that result in a dead-end with no path to continue. - Navigation that doesn’t match what users expect. ### Surprising examples of friction Some examples of friction are pretty obvious, if something doesn’t work it’s obviously going to be annoying. Here are some more examples of items that seem harmless, but can actually be causing problems for your users. - **Auto-playing audio or video:** This can be jarring and disorienting for unsuspecting users—plus it’s an accessibility concern. While auto-playing video on mute or without any audio at all is a bit better, there are still accessibility concerns for individuals with motion sensitivities. If you choose to auto-play any moving content, it’s important to have an easily accessible pause button. - **Popups that appear too quickly or too frequently:** While it’s not uncommon to for sites to load a promotional popup when a visitor first comes to the website, we’ve started to notice more and more sites bringing it up on every new page load. While we’re not sure if this is being caused by an issue with cookies or an intentional marketing choice, it’s incredibly frustrating and disruptive to have to decline the same message on each new page. - **Forms that don’t confirm submission:** If your form doesn’t have a really clear confirmation your users have no way of knowing if their submission went through. This lack of confidence can damage trust and credibility—not to mention result in users sending multiple submissions that you’ll have to deal with on the backend. - **Unlinked phone numbers and emails:** \*\*\*\*Phone numbers and emails should be displayed as clickable links whenever possible, not just listed in plain text. Failing to do so can be especially frustrating on mobile devices where it is impossible to view both the contact information and the relative app it needs to be entered into. --- ## Identifying friction 1. Walk through your site as a customer would and complete a specific task. Time yourself from start to finish; does the time it took seem appropriate to the task’s level of complexity? Remember, you’re familiar with your website and business—assume real customers will always take longer to complete the same sequence of actions. 2. Ask someone unfamiliar with your business or website to complete a task. Observe their actions and ask them to narrate their thoughts out loud. Make notes of any issues they run into. 3. Look at your website analytics. Make a note of any pages with high exit rates. While not guaranteed, this can be an indicator that there is friction at these points and help you focus your efforts. ### WCAG Levels URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/wcag-levels/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T20:06:50.000Z The US Department of Justice has chosen to adopt the [Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/?ref=accelerateux.com) to define the standards of digital accessibility as required by the ADA. While WCAG itself is not considered law, it does define the standards by which courts and regulators measure accessibility. WCAG is published and maintained by the [World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)](https://www.w3.org/?ref=accelerateux.com)—an international organization that develops global internet standards. The current accessibility standard [WCAG 2.2](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/?ref=accelerateux.com). --- ## How WCAG is structured Individual success criteria—defined by WCAG—are grouped by related topic. These guidelines are then organized according to the applicable [POUR principle](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/pour-principles/). Each POUR principle and guideline provides background information that may help you to better understand the intent of specific accessibility requirements, which can help to implement appropriate changes. Within guidelines are the individual success criteria; where specific pass or fail requirements will be defined. Within WCAG, success criteria are assigned to one of three distinct levels of compliance: A, AA, and AAA. ### Minimum Compliance: Level A These standards are considered the bare minimum needed to have a usable—note, not accessible—website. While the standards in level A address some high-level functionality that may impact accessibility, for the most part these guidelines are centered more on improving broad standards of usability. That said, the simplicity level A requirements can be a good place to begin the process of auditing and remediating accessibility issues. By aligning your website to this level of compliance you can become comfortable with identifying issues and remediating them; improving the semantics and consistency of your website before you progress to higher levels of compliance. ### Moderate compliance: Level AA *Level AA includes all criteria defined in level A.* While level A is considered the lowest standard provided by WCAG, level AA is widely considered to be the minimum standard all websites should strive for. This level is what is most commonly referenced as the standard for ADA compliance by the DOJ and court systems. As such, its considered the realistic and recommended target most businesses should strive for. ### Maximum compliance: Level AAA *Level AAA includes all of the criteria from levels A, and AA.* The strictest of all three levels, this criteria works to establish the maximum amount of accessibility for the most individuals as possible. As mentioned above, level AA is considered the required target for most websites, with level AAA being designated for specialized contexts and may often be unrealistic or difficult to fully maintain. --- ## Choosing the right level of compliance for your business While its never a bad thing to strive for maximum compliance, level AAA criteria can be more complex and harder to implement. Unless you know for certain that you need to comply with level AAA, you should assume your goal to be level AA. --- ## Automated accessibility scans do not equal WCAG compliance [Automated testing](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/automated-vs-manual-testing/#commonly-used-automated-testing-tools) tools are often marketed as comprehensive solutions for accessibility, but they are far from it. While these tools can excel at detecting straightforward issues like missing alt-text, poor color contrast, and improper HTML semantics—they fall short on evaluating issues that are more nuanced or require human judgement. Automated tools are a fantastic starting point for accessibility audits; providing fast, efficient methods for identifying and correcting straightforward problems. The time saved by these tools should be used to perform manual testing and prioritize addressing critical issues. According to an [audit from the US Government Digital Services (GDS)](https://alphagov.github.io/accessibility-tool-audit/?ref=accelerateux.com) automated tools fail to identify roughly 60-70% of known accessibility issues. Some examples of more complex issues that automated tools fail to evaluate include: - The effectiveness of alt-text; while these tools can flag anywhere alt-text is missing from an image, they cannot evaluate the accuracy or usefulness of alt-text that exists. - The logical flow and usability of keyboard navigation; these tools can only detect whether elements possess the necessary attributes to receive and display focus. They cannot determine if page elements would receive focus in an order that is usable and makes logical sense. - The clarity of instructions and error messages; while automated tools may be able to detect when error states are not configured, they cannot evalute the effectiveness of these messages. --- ## Why compliance matters for small businesses As digital accessibility related lawsuits are rising it’s increasingly important for businesses to be aware of their level of risk and compliance. Baring rare exceptions, if a complaint or lawsuit is filed, your website will be measured against level AA criterion. Taking the time to understand the requirements of level AA compliance, as they apply to your website, may help you to reduce your liability and protect your website from risk. Additionally, understanding level AA requirements can help prioritize accessibility remediation and avoid over-investing in unnecessary enhancements. ### POUR Principles URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/pour-principles/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:23:44.000Z The global standards for accessible digital design are defined by the [Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)](https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/?ref=accelerateux.com). These standards are created and maintained by the [World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)](https://www.w3.org/?ref=accelerateux.com)—an international organization that defines and documents best practices and principles of web development. The WCAG standards are made up of specific requirements and guidance for how to design and develop accessible websites and applications. The WC3 has organized the WCAG standards around four major principles—requiring digital solutions to be *perceivable, operable, understandable,* and *robust.* Together, these principles make up the POUR framework. While these principals are the foundation of digital accessibility, and the WCAG guidelines, they are not a checklist. Rather, they are meant to create a system of how to think about and evaluate the functional effectiveness of your website. --- ## POUR Pillars ### 1\. Perceivable: Information must be presented in ways users can detect To be perceivable, your website content all users should be able to consume its content—including those with vision and hearing loss. When evaluating the perceivibility of your website ,ask yourself if anyone would be unable to receive the information it provides. Without making a conscious effort to ensure your website’s content is perceivable, you’re likely to unintentionally exclude visitors from consuming content or hide important context from them. Examples of where you can begin to improve the ability of any user to perceive your website include: - **Images:** Without alt-text, a user relying on a screen reader will be aware that an image is present, but they will be unaware as to what the image is of; missing any important context is provides. Make sure to add alt-text to images to ensure they are perceivable for everyone. - **Videos:** Users in noisy environments or those experiencing hearing loss often rely on captions to *perceive* what’s being said in a video. Now, many video editing tools have some form of caption auto-generation built in—so there’s no excuse not to enable them. - **Low contrast:** Make sure that your text and background color combinations have sufficient contrast. Following the [WCAG guidelines for color contrast](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/contrast-minimum?ref=accelerateux.com) will ensure that users with vision impairments are able to read, or *perceive*, your website content. Low-contrast can affect negatively affect all users, regardless of an individual’s vision loss or color blindness. ### 2\. Operable: All functions must be usable regardless of input method. To be operable, your website should be able to be navigated by all users; be it standard computer mouse or an alternate method of navigation. At a minimum, all interactive elements—such as buttons, links, and inputs—should be able to be reached by pressing “tab” on a keyboard, display an obvious focus state, and perform the expected outcome when pressing “enter” on a keyboard. When evaluating the operability of your site ask yourself if anyone would be unable to navigate or interact with the page. Across all devices, make sure interactive elements meet the [minimum required target size](https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/target-size-minimum.html?ref=accelerateux.com) of 24 by 24 pixels. This ensures that they can be accessed through both mouse and touch-screen interactions. ### 3\. Understandable: Content and controls must be clear and predictable. To be understandable, your website should use clear and descriptive language. When evaluating the understandability of your site ask yourself if anyone would be unable to determine what’s happening or what action to take next. A user should not have to see the visual aspects of a website in order to understand the information it provides. Some areas you may want to pay particular attention to include: - Make sure buttons and links are descriptive and clearly state the action or destination. - Make sure error messages clearly state what went wrong and what the user should do to correct it. - Avoid using too much jargon that users may not be familiar with. ### 4\. Robust: Content must work across browsers, devices, and assistive technologies. To be considered robust, your website should function regardless of where and how a user accesses it. Make sure your website is being tested across a variety of browsers, devices, and assistive technologies. When evaluating the robustness of your site ask yourself if everything works beyond one device or one way of browsing. Common issues that websites experience include: - Responsive layouts and functionality that break on mobile - Forms that cannot be read by a screen reader - Code that only works in a specific browser --- ## Why understanding POUR matters for small businesses As the foundation behind accessibility guidelines, understanding POUR will make it easier to identify gaps or limitations within your website, and identify solutions to fix them. Try to avoid thinking about accessibility as a simple checklist of black and white requirements; it is a combination of functional requirements, best-practice guidelines, evaluation methods. Using the POUR framework can help you keep focus centered on real customers and their ability to use your site. ### Automated vs. Manual Testing URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/automated-vs-manual-testing/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T20:03:52.000Z If you’ve ever done an online search to look for resources to begin auditing the accessibility of your website it’s likely you’ve seen, and possibly have used, an automated accessibility testing tool. While manual testing involves a real person going through a website using assistive technology to evaluate its accessibility, automated testing uses software to scan a website’s code and flag automatically detectable issues. What a lot of automated tools fail to convey is that using them alone will not catch off all website’s accessibility issues. --- ## What is automated testing Automated testing software—often a plugin or browser integration—runs a script to analyze the underlying code of a webpage or website against known accessibility rules. These tools evaluate rules that have a clear and detectable pass/fail condition that will either be met, or not met, within the code. These tools are typically free to low-cost with results that are fast, repeatable, and require little to no accessibility experience to interpret. Problematically, a lot of accessibility tools fail clarify that the rules used to analyze a website is not the complete WCAG standard. Due to the subjective and experiential nature of a lot of digital accessibility requirements, most of the guidelines cannot be evaluated without human-review. If this is not understood, many accessibility tools—especially those that provide an “accessibility rating”—may create a false sense of confidence to the businesses using them. ### What automated testing can reliably do Automated testing should absolutely be used as a first line of defense against accessibility issues—but it’s important to know what the strengths and limitations of this testing method are. #### 1\. Identify missing alt-text on images Automated tests can quickly scan images across an entire website, check for alt-text, and flag instances where this attribute is missing. Adding alt-text to your website’s images is both an SEO and an accessibility requirement. #### 2\. Identify low color contrast ratios Poor color contrast (the difference between foreground text colors and background colors) can make it difficult for users to read content and discern actions on your website. While all users can be affected by this, it is especially impactful for those with vision issues. Accessibility tools are a powerful way to identify and evaluate the contrast of all color combinations in use across your website. Having your website or brand color palette evaluated for accessibility can make the process of remediating these issues easier. By identifying what accessible color combinations are available to use *before* you run automated testing will allow to fix any flagged issues quickly and more confidently. #### Need help? Get an accessibility color audit and never question what combinations are safe to use again. [Get in touch ](#tally-open=5BDMVM&tally-layout=modal&tally-overlay=1&tally-emoji-animation=none&reference=interest%3A%color%20audit) #### 3\. Identify missing form labels: Ensuring form inputs are properly labeled is critical for screen reader users to be able to know what exactly an input is, and what information is required of them. Automated testing tools can identify and flag inputs across your website that are missing properly defined labels. #### 4\. Identify missing page language declaration: While the language of a website may seem visually apparent, it needs to be explicitly defined within a website’s HTML in order for screen readers to know what language page content should be announced in. This is especially important for contexts in which a the primary language of a user’s screen reader or device is different than that of a website. Without a proper language declaration the screen reader will may be unable to recognize characters and create comprehension issues by incorrectly synthesizing the content into an incorrect language’s accent and speech. Through automated testing tools you may be able to check that your website’s page language has been declared, and aligns to the correct language of your content. #### 5\. Identify empty links and buttons with no name: Empty links and buttons lack a clear destination or description of action. Without this information, screen reader users who are missing any visual clues that identify this information may become lost or confused. Automated testing tools can scan the links and buttons across your website to flag instances where this information may be completely missing. ### What automated testing cannot reliably do While there are differences between automated testing tools, the results in their analyses largely overlap. It’s best to pick a tool you feel comfortable and confident using to focus automated testing efforts with; running tests through multiple tools will take additional time and won’t do much to expand your sites coverage. Most sources indicate that automated testing tools can only catch about 30%-50% of a website’s accessibility issues. Even [Deque’s own research](https://www.deque.com/blog/automated-testing-study-identifies-57-percent-of-digital-accessibility-issues/?ref=accelerateux.com)—the company behind industry leading AxeDevTools—shows their software identified just 57% of problems. While this data, according to Deque’s own reporting, show’s higher results than other tools, it still fails to detect almost half of a website’s accessibility issues. These undetected issues are ones that are simply not able to be effectively evaluated through automated methods, not a signal of these tools reliability, and it’s important to understand where these limitations begin. #### 1\. Evaluate image alt-text Automated tools can only detect whether or not alt-text is present, they cannot make a judgement as to the accuracy or meaningfulness of alt-text that exists. Due to the subjective and highly contextual nature of this determination a human-reviewer must be responsible for the creation and evaluation of an image’s alt-text. #### 2\. Evaluate error messages Another area that is highly subjective and contextual is the clarity and effectiveness of an error message. While automated tools may be able to flag when inputs do not have error messages defined, a human-reviewer needs to write and evaluate the usability of the message itself. #### 3\. Evaluate heading structures While automated testing tools may flag certain explicit conditions—like not having multiple H1 headers on a page (although even this rule can have an exception)—automated tools cannot determine if the heading structure is defined in an appropriate and logical manner, or if it is properly presented through a screen reader. Additionally, automated tools cannot determine if the structural relationship of headers aligns to the content, or make recommend improvements. Heading structure has significant impact on both accessibility and SEO. As such, its critical that the content and structure of these elements goes through manual testing and human-review. #### 4\. Catch interaction issues Some issues may only present themselves during on page interactions like completing a form or opening a menu. These interactions can trigger dynamic content or introduce new conditions within a page. Even if these elements are structurally correct—according to the criteria of automated testing tools—the dynamic method by which they appear may cause screen readers to announce them incorrectly, or not at all. These types of issues in an experience are subjective and a result of unique scenarios within your website. Often-times only manual testing with a human-reviewer is able to identify these issues. #### 5\. Test screen-reader or keyboard navigation experiences One of the biggest reasons a website will never reach full compliance through automated testing tools alone is because while automated tools can evaluate a website based on best practices and WCAG guidelines with definitive conditions, they cannot evaluate the actual experience of a user who rely’s on a screen reader or keyboard to navigate. Only when website is viewed through these user’s experiences can it be evaluated for factors like arduous navigation, blocked actions, and unclear or ineffective content. Even following the development specifications and requirements of WCAG, the uniqe behavior and structure of every website may cause unique scenarios. Ultimately, the only way to catch these experience issues is to conduct human-led manual testing. ### Commonly used automated testing tools #### [WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools)](https://wave.webaim.org/?ref=accelerateux.com) WAVE is available as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer or as a stand-alone API that can be integrated into your development frameworks. It is made and maintained by WebAIM and Utah State University; WAVE has been an industry leading tool for automated accessibility testing since it’s creation in 2001. When testing with the browser extension, all analysis is ran entirely within your browser, on your device. No information is transferred to WAVE’s servers, making the browser extension a reliable and 100% private method for evaluating internal or password restricted content. **Cost:** Free for the browser extension. #### [Axe DevTools](https://www.deque.com/axe/devtools/extension/?ref=accelerateux.com) Axe DevTools is available as a browser plugin for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer; developed and maintained by Deque. It’s one of numerous tools and resources the company offers to accessibility professionals. **Cost:** Free for limited functionality—premium tiers unlock additional tools, AI supported automations, and additional functionality and integrations. #### [Google Lighthouse](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse?ref=accelerateux.com) Lighthouse is only available within Google Chrome, built directly into the browser’s development tools. Lighthouse measures a website’s accessibility as well as other aspects such as overall performance and SEO. **Cost:** Free --- ## What is manual testing While there are numerous aspects of a website’s content and semantic structure that can and should be human-reviewed, manual testing typically refers to the process in which an reviewer navigates the website using assistive technology—like screen readers and keyboard-only navigation inputs—to deliberately evaluate it for ease-of-use, clarity, and alignment with WCAG criteria. Manual testing requries familiarity and use of accessibility tools, and knowledge of accessibility standards, in order to interpret what is or isn’t a point of failure. ### What manual testing reliably catches While manual testing can take significantly more time to complete than automated testing it is the only reliable way to capture the accessibility issues that automated tools miss or are unable to effectively evaluate. It’s important to understand some of the aspects of accessibility that rely more heavily on manual testing methods. #### 1\. The usefulness of alt-text While automated testing tools can flag where a site is missing alt-text, manual testing can help evaluate the effectiveness of alt-text, as it is announced by a screen-reader, to ensure it is providing meaningful and useful context. Manual testing can also aid in evaluating where alt-text becomes unnecessary or distracting from the important content. Automated tools will typically flag alt-text as a requirement of *all* visual assts. Adding alt-text to some visuals, like graphic elements or purely decorative background images, that aren’t providing important context can actually be distracting and disrupting to the experience of screen reader user. Manual testing can help identify instances in which alt-text descriptions aren’t providing the context they need to, and where they should be removed from non-essential decorative assets. #### 2\. Usability of forms once again, while automated testing tools will flag form elements that are missing required formatting, like labels, they cannot evaluate the actual experience of completing the form itself. Manual testing will help determine if a form is genuinely operable and and understandable from start to completion—and can help detect any failures or weaknesses regarding the way form requirements are communicated, error validation, and success confirmations. #### 3\. Usability of focus order Automated testing tools may flag when interactive elements—such as links, buttons, and inputs—are missing focus states but they cannot evaluate the effectiveness of the focus interactions. When using the tab key to navigate by keyboard, all focusable elements should receive focus in a logical and expected order. Commonly a bright, high-contrast outline; all focusable elements should display a clear and prominent indicator when they receive the focus. Without this, alternate navigation users may be unable to discern where—if anywhere—they are within a page. Manual testing can help determine if a website’s focus states are visually effective, and if focus states move in a logical and expected order. #### 4\. Effectiveness of error messages Automated testing tools may be able to detect if inputs or forms are missing defined error states—but the evaluation ends at that binary condition. Manual testing should be used to determine if the error messages are clear and effective, and evaluate the ease with which users can identify and remediate errors that appear. #### 5\. Coherency of the website Many websites are visually coherent; if the content’s hierarchy and context relies on visual structure and styling to create that coherency, the experience is likely to degrade when presented audibly through a screen reader. Manual testing should be used to review the navigation, presentation of content, and overall coherency of a website when it is heard instead of seen. ### Who conducts manual testing The great thing about accessibility tools is the free availability and wide access to them; in large part due to how much native support is integrated within most common devices. While many individuals with disabilities and accessibility experts may choose to use stand alone software or external accessibility devices, the barriers for anyone to begin learning and using the accessibility tools within their device are incredibly low. Because of this, it’s entirely possible to begin conducting your own manual testing to identify issues within your website—there will likely be a learning curve as you adjust to using these tools and the new interaction patterns. If you want to save time, and have the available budget to bring on additional support, you can explore the following options: - **Dedicated accessibility specialists auditors:** These individuals will be able to confidently and efficiently conduct manual testing and provide a report of their findings and recommendations for remediation. Depending on resource and the type of remediation required, you may be responsible for implementing the corrections yourself. - **Designers and developers trained in assistive technology:** Not every designer or developer will have experience in this area, but if you find a resource with accessibility knowledge they may be able to help perform automated and manual testing, provide recommendations, and assist with implementing corrections. - **Users with disabilities:** While this is different than traditional manual testing, incorporating users with disabilities into usability testing can provide valuable and immediate insights as to the accessibility and experience of your website. We recommend making an effort to identify and remediate most of the clear cut compliance issues (like those identified through automated testing) before conducting usability tests with disabled users. This way, feedback can be more focused on improving the true quality of your website’s accessible experience. --- ## A practical approach to accessibility testing Many small businesses are aware of the need for accessibility testing but may feel that they lack the budget or resources to fully commit to it. Delaying accessibility work is only putting your business at greater risk. Remember, reducing your business’s legal risk is about being able to demonstrate the considerations and consistent efforts you make—starting slow and small is better than delaying the project entirely. ### 1\. Start with automated testing Install a free, industry endorsed plugin like WAVE or Axe DevTools on your website. If your website is large and scanning all of it feels overwhelming, start by testing your most important pages first—these are likely the homepage, contact page, product or service pages, and checkout. Work on fixing any issues that have been flagged within these pages, and then move onto another group of pages within your website. ### 2\. Layer in basic manual checks After you clear the accessibility issues on some pages, you can try to run your own manual tests. These tests might not be as effective or comprehensive as a professional manual audit would be—but you will catch issues and begin to get more comfortable using these tools and identifying issues. 1. Using your keyboard’s tab key try to see if it allows you to reach ever interactive element. Make sure the selected element is always obvious and that selection progresses in a logical and expected order; try typing when an input is selected to check you can input text without additional action; and check that the enter/return key is able to open menus, make selections, and trigger links or actions. Check that any action able to be performed by a standard mouse user is able to be triggered using these keys. 2. Turn on your device’s screen reader—VoiceOver (Mac or iPhone), NVDA or Jaws (free downloads for Windows), or TalkBack (Android)—and try to navigate entirely by ear. Listen for any issues in the order that content is announced; check that links, actions, and labels are clear and descriptive; and make sure that any important visual context, or dynamic content is announced out loud. 3. Increase your browser’s default text size to 24px; make sure that your website layout responded appropriately. Next, increase your browser zoom to 200% and review the website layout again. In both instances, page content should adapt responsively, interactions should still work, and content should not fall off the viewport or overlap. ### 3\. Recognize when to bring in a professional It’s possible, and encouraged, to take ownership of evaluating and remediating as much of your website’s accessibility issues as you can. Doing so can deepen your awareness of website accessibility issues and improve your businesses approach to accessibility in future updates for new projects. There are certain points however when it becomes necessary to bring in a professional expert: - **Upon receipt of a complaint or demand letter:** If this occurs you should consider bringing on a professional resource to address concerns or perform deeper evaluations before complaints escalate into lawsuits. - **Before a site launch or major redesign:** Accessibility should be a consideration throughout your website’s design and development process, but if you have been self-managing that process it might be a good idea to bring on a professional to perform a final, deeper audit—before major site changes are finalized, or new features a launched. Doing so can help identify any complex issues that had they to be identified and help ensure that the most accessible baseline for your website goes live. - **When internal efforts or the best path to remediation is unclear:** While some accessibility requirements are relatively straightforward to identify and correct, there is a subjective aspect to the process that can make it difficult to always self-identify the appropriate solution. A professional expert can help in these moments to clarify what are legitimate accessibility concerns, and provide guidance on the best ways to remediate issues you’re not confident on. #### About accessibility audits A formal accessibility audit—when performed by a credible professional—should identify specific failures on your website, map them to the related WCAG success criteria, and prioritize them by severity. While professionals will and should use automated testing tools as a first step in this process, full-service reviews should always include manual testing methods as well. Even automated testing should include a level of professional human evaluation to determine the validity and impact of flagged issues. When evaluating accessibility professionals or auditing services watch out for the following red flags: - Services that claim to be “full accessibility audits” but promote or provide reports that that are fully generated from automated testing tools. Unless an audit includes human evaluation and manual testing, it cannot be considered comprehensive. - Vendors who price and promise website audits and remediation as a bundled service. These are distinctly different services; the scope of work required to remediate a website’s accessibility issues cannot be determined until the scale and breadth of those issues is identified through a comprehensive audit. --- ## Why knowing the difference between automated vs. manual testing matters for small businesses Getting the “all-clear” on an automated accessibility test means only that most obvious, machine-detectable errors have been identified and, ostensibly, resolved—it does not mean that website is actually accessible. In fact, a website can pass every automated test performed and still fail to support screen readers and alternate navigation. Knowing the difference between automated and manual accessibility testing is the best way to protect yourself, and your business, from developing a false-confidence and over-reliance on the results of automated accessibility tests. There is a fundamental gap between the point at which a website passes automated testing, and the point at which it becomes legitimately accessible; this gap is where most business owners under-estimate their website’s level of risk. Manual testing; the only method that can reliably evaluate a website’s actual accessibility; is how to close said gap. Being more knowledge in the different methods of accessibility testing can also reduce the decision paralysis many business owners fell upon becoming aware of accessibility requirements. It’s important to know that you don’t need a full investment or a perfect accessibility audit to reduce your legal risk. Starting with a free, automated scan is a legitimate and valuable first step to take—as long as you are aware that it is a step to build off of, not to stop at. ### Assistive Technology URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/assistive-technology/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T20:00:55.000Z Assistive technology is a broad term referring to any tool, software, or hard-ware device that helps a person access and interact with digital content. It is not uncommon for people to think of complex functionality and specialized adaptive devices when they first think of assistive technology. It’s important to note that while some technology is in the form of separate devices or specialized operating systems, there are many examples of assistive technology that is already built into your own everyday software and devices. Assistive technology can take many forms—and can be found in use across all demographics regardless of age, environment, or even disability status. It’s so common that even if you do not have a disability, there’s a high change you frequently use some of these assistive features without realizing it. --- ## Categories of Assistive Technology ### Screen readers A screen reader is software or functionality that processes on-screen text and information about visual elements, then outputs them into braille or computer-generated speech. #### Who uses screen readers Screen readers are commonly utilized by individuals who are blind, experience low-vision impairments, or have certain cognitive or learning disabilities. According to a [2024 survey by WebAIM](https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey10?ref=accelerateux.com) approximately 89.9% of screen reader users report using this technology due to a disability. The most common of these disabilities was blindness at 76.6% of respondents, followed by low vision/vision impairment at 19.9%. 19.1% of respondents reported using screen readers due to a non-vision related disability such as a cognitive/learning disability, deafness/hard-of-hearing, or motor disabilities. Notably, 5.3% of respondents reported being both blind and deaf/hard-of-hearing. These users likely rely on screen readers that output the information to a refreshable braille device (RBD). In these instances a screen reader converts web content, but rather than outputting the content audibly it is sent to the RBD and appears on a braille display. #### Types of screen readers As mentioned above, many devices have assistive technology built into them. These native integrations tend to be popular as they don’t require any additional installation and remain up-to-date with the device’s OS. Native screen readers are free and provide easy access see how your website is presented to users of these tools. 3rd party applications are also available to download for compatible devices—typically window computers. These applications can be free or paid, and offer a variety of unique controls and customizations. ##### **Commonly used desktop screen readers** | Screen reader | Usage\* | Compatibility | | ------------------------------------ | ------- | ----------------- | | NVDA | 65.6% | Microsoft Windows | | JAWS | 60.5% | Microsoft Windows | | VoiceOver | 43.9% | Apple | | Narrator | 37.3% | Microsoft Windows | | Orca | 8.3% | Linux | | ZoomText/Fusion | 7.5% | Microsoft Windows | | Dolphin SuperNova | 5.4% | Microsoft Windows | | ChromeVox | 3.8% | Chromebook | | System Access or System Access to Go | 1.8% | Microsoft Windows | | Other | 6.3% | \- | \*Screen reader usage is based on the results of the [2024 Screen Reader User Survey #10 from WebAIM](https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey10/?ref=accelerateux.com) ##### **Commonly used mobile screen readers** | Screen reader | Usage\* | Compatibility | | -------------------------------- | ------- | ----------------------------------- | | VoiceOver | 70.6% | Apple | | TalkBack | 34.7% | Android | | Commentary/Jieshuo | 10.1% | Android | | Voice Assistant | 6.0% | Samsung Android | | VoiceView | 5.9% | Amazon (Kindle and Fire TV devices) | | Mobile Accessibility for Android | 4.9% | Android | | Other | 7.2% | \- | \*Screen reader usage is based on the results of the [2024 Screen Reader User Survey #10 from WebAIM](https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey10/?ref=accelerateux.com) #### Building screen reader compatible websites In our [article on WCAG levels](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/wcag-levels/) we mentioned that assuming automated accessibility tools will ensure a website is accessible is a common misconception. The screen reader experience is a great example of why this is false. While automated tools are fantastic resources for catching *some* common screen reader issues like missing alt text, some structural semantics, and flagging inaccessible PDF’s; only a human-reviewer can evaluate things like whether or not the content is presented to a screen reader user in a logical order, or if the links and buttons have descriptive enough labels. There are many elements on a website that may pass an automated accessibility checklist but still cause confusion or other problems with the overall experience. Many common features on modern websites like CAPTCHA verification and embedded forms wind up “invisible” to screen readers, or block the tool’s access. According to this [WebAIM survey](https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey10/?ref=accelerateux.com), the most common issues screen reader users encounter are: - **CAPTCHA verification:** Screen reader users are often flagged as bots, blocking them from submitting forms or accessing full websites. - **Interactive elements:** Menus, tabs, dialog boxes, and other interactive components on a website frequently fail to work correctly. - **Links or buttons:** Without surrounding visual clues, vague or non-descriptive labels can leave screen reader users confused about a link or buttons respective destination or action. - **Dynamic content**: Screen readers are often unaware of dynamic content—when all or part of a screen updated or changes, either automatically or as a result of triggering action—and will fail to re-announce critical information like errors and confirmation messages. - **Keyboard access:** Tab navigation is frequently used without screen readers, but all screen readers rely on keyboard navigation to operate correctly. Their experience hinges on keyboard navigation being enabled and setup correctly. - **Missing alt text:** Well written alt-text provides screen reader users with the important visual context media assets provide. Proper alt-text is also a major aspect of SEO—ignoring this issue hurts your business twice. - **Forms:** Complex or difficult forms, especially if there are problems with keyboard navigation can be overwhelming and difficult for screen reader users to interact with. - **Navigation items:** Having too many navigation items, especially without a skip link in place to bypass the menu, can be frustrating for screen reader users to have to have announced every time they reload a page. - **Data tables:** Complex data tables can loose context and structure when announced through a screen reader. This is another point where a skip link can be beneficial so users can choose whether or not they want to review the content in a data table. - **Search functionality:** Lacking or having an inaccessible site search can impede screen reader users from being able to efficiently find relevant information and explore your site. - **Skip links:** Skip links are a critical way to allow screen reader users to bypass navigation, secondary content, or interactive forms so they are not forced to go through time and interaction-consuming sections unnecessarily. Without skip links, screen reader users are likely to experience much more fatigue navigating and consuming content on your site. If your website contains any of those items (it almost certainly does) and you have not yet made the effort to ensure their compatibility with screen readers—accessibility issues aren’t a maybe, they’re a certainty. > Remember, it is not yet possible for analytics tools to detect screen readers, so you should always assume your traffic includes these users. ### Keyboard navigation Keyboard navigation refers to navigating a system without a mouse. While many people do this through their computer keyboard, many individuals choose to use adaptive tools such as switch devices. These devices typically have one two keys (or other input method) that corresponds to the actions of using “tab” and “enter” keys on a keyboard—allowing them to navigate between and interact with page elements. #### Who uses keyboard navigation? The answer is many individuals. You yourself have likely used keyboard navigation without realizing it. If you’ve ever used the tab key to move between form fields because it was easier than moving back and forth to the computer mouse—that’s an instance of keyboard navigation, and an example of why supporting accessibility functions benefits users across the board. Keyboard navigation is primarily relied on by people with motor disabilities and tremors that make it difficult or impossible to control a mouse. Additionally, keyboard navigation is frequently used by people with temporary disabilities like repetitive strain injuries or broken arms. It is often during these temporary disabilities that people realize just how much of their digital environment is not accessible. Mentioned above, is important to note that screen reader users are another major set of keyboard navigation users. While many keyboard users do *not* user screen readers, *all* screen reader users rely on keyboard navigation to do so. This means that if your website’s keyboard navigation accessibility is broken, then its screen reader accessibility is broken too. #### Building keyboard navigation compatible websites The good news is that a lot of webpage elements should already support keyboard navigation. Most accessibility issues are caused when the default settings of html components are removed or restyled in a way that disables them. Common issues that impact keyboard navigation include the following: - **Focus states:** Hidden or low contrast focus state styles render them ineffective, as the user cannot see where there are or what element on the page is active. - **Tab orders:** Incorrect tab orders that break the logical selection order of interactive elements make it frustrating or impossible to interact with a website - **Inaccessible elements:** Creating custom HTML elements (if you need a button, just use an html button) removes the accessibility features that come with the standard components. Reduce the time and effort required to build accessibility back into these components by just using the [appropriate HTML element](https://www.w3schools.com/tAGS/ref%5Fbyfunc.asp?ref=accelerateux.com) from the start. - **Overly complex or lengthy navigation:** Anywhere with a large amount of links or individual interactive elements can be cumbersome and frustrating to tab through. These are great places to add skip links, especially if users will repetitively encounter the section—such as a main menu that will have to be tabbed through every time a page reloads. - **Time sensitive interactions:** User’s who rely on keyboard navigation will likely need much longer to complete tasks than a mouse user. Interactions or forms with timeouts can be stressful and difficult for keyboard navigation users to complete within the given duration. Just like with screen readers, automated accessibility testing tools can flag specific conditions issues like missing focus states and semantic errors, but you need a human-reviewer to evaluate if the site is actually usable by keyboard. To start yourself, you can open your website, start pressing the tab key, and observe—does anything on the page get highlighted; does the focus highlight move to the next element you would expect it to or does it jump somewhere else; can you accomplish your users primary goal without touching your mouse, or do you get lost or stuck? ### Voice navigation An alternative to keyboard navigation, voice navigation software allows users to navigate and interact with a website solely through spoken commands. While the rise of voice assistants (like Siri or Alexa) over the past few years has increased the commonality of voice interfaces, and improved native voice-assistant’s capabilities to run commands, these should not be confused with traditionally accessibility-focused voice navigation technology. Despite the growing capabilities of voice-assistants their limitations still far outweigh their capabilities for individuals who rely on voice as their primary method of navigation. #### Who uses voice navigation Voice navigation is largely relied upon by individuals with physical or motor disabilities who are unable to use a mouse or keyboard. Voice navigation may also be used by individuals with temporary disabilities that prevent them from using traditional navigation devices. As general voice interfaces become more common, more users are also turning to voice navigation tools by choice—finding they allow for a greater ability to multitask or simply preferring to use voice commands over physical navigation methods. Many individuals with vision impairments may choose to pair voice navigation with screen reader technology as well. #### Types of voice navigation technology Voice-assistants, voice-interfaces, and voice-controls are becoming more common and available for wide-spread use. For users that fully rely on voice-navigation they likely use one of the following systems: - **Apple Voice Control:** Available on iOS and OSx devices, voice control is a native feature that allows a user to interact with their apple deices through voice alone. Because it’s a native tool, it can work synchronously with Siri and Apple’s native VoiceOver screen reader technology. The robust accessibility features from Apple allows for significant customization and individual control with support for custom shortcuts and voice commands. - **VoiceAccess:** Google’s native voice navigation solution for android devices, it integrates with Google Assistant and TalkBack, the native screen reader on Android. - **Dragon Naturally Speaking:** Originally independent software, Dragon is now partially owned by Microsoft and allows for robust navigation and control of windows computers. #### Building voice navigation compatible websites Voice navigation relies heavily on the same conditions as screen readers and keyboard navigation. While focusing on keyboard navigation will significantly improve screen reader and voice navigation experiences, you should be sure to always test the methods individually to make sure all three experiences are fully functional. ### Screen magnification Screen magnification is when portions of the user’s screen or browser website is enlarged or magnified. #### Who uses screen magnification Screen magnification is often used by individuals with low vision who have trouble seeing screens at the default display size, but may not yet need or want to use a screen reader. #### Types of screen magnification tools Most popular devices have built in screen magnification tools, but there are some third party tools available. Popular screen magnification software includes the following: - **Windows magnifier:** Available as native functionality within Window computer settings. - **Zoom:** Native to Apple devices, Zoom can be enabled in the accessibility settings from mac desktop and laptop devices, iPads, and iPhones. This tool should be supported across mobile applications and is integrated into the Safari browser. - **Magnifier:** A native Android solution from Google, Magnifier is available under device accessibility settings. This tool works for most apps and is integrated into the device’s Chrome browser. - **SuperNova:** A 3rd party app, SuperNova offers speech feedback and is designed for enhanced controls; it allows users to split screen magnification and make additional changes to their UI like altering colors and increasing contrast. - **ZoomText:** Not to be confused with Apple’s Zoom, this is a separate 3rd party application similar to SuperNova. ZoomText has additional capabilities that allow users to connect an external camera to project and magnify printed documents to their computer screens. In addition to these more robust magnification tools, many people may choose to just increase their device and browser default text size or increase the default zoom that webpage’s will load at. #### Building websites that support magnification Regardless of the method in which users are increasing the size of your website, it’s important that it adapts to these magnification changes instead of breaking. Make sure to never disable your website’s ability to scale within the browser. If you’re unsure how your website will currently react, experiment with changing your browser’s default text size and change the zoom level to see how your website reacts. Users that rely on these settings should be supported in their experience, so keep an eye out anywhere your page content breaks, overlaps, or falls of the page—these are instances where your website’s responsivity isn’t working right. ### Captions and transcripts Video captions refer to the text displayed over a video that provides a written version of the audio track. Conversely, transcript are a text-only version of an audio-file and may be provided as a separate, readable alternative to videos or podcasts. #### Who uses captions and transcripts Captions (also known as closed captions in TV and streaming content) and transcripts are a major accessibility tool for individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Additionally, captions can be valuable tools, and are widely used by, people with auditory processing issues or non-native language speakers. Captions and transcripts are one of the best examples of an accessibility feature that’s widely used, regardless of disability. Whether choosing to utilize them because of environmental factors or personal preference, they’ve been a widely understood and utilized feature for decades due to the integration of closed captions into TV networks and content streaming platforms. #### How to support captions and transcripts The recent rise of short-form video content (like Tik-Tok and Instagram Reels) has heightened awareness around the importance of video captions. Many video editors now include captioning tools, and creators more creators are taking the time to add them to videos. As a fallback, popular apps like Instagram have launched a setting that allows users to leverage AI and have video captions and translations auto-generated—widening the access to videos that didn’t have captions added by the creator. While this is a great accessibility aid—and an example of a positive application for AI—auto-generated captions can frequently have mistakes, highlighting the value and control creators can retain by including captions during their editing process. Regardless of platform, we strongly recommend that you always take the time to add captions to video content and provide transcripts for audio-only media like podcasts. With AI’s ability to efficiently process and convert speech into text it’s incredibly easy to generate captions and transcripts—just make sure you review and edit the initial draft to correct any errors. ### Accessibility Overlays Over the past few years it’s become increasingly common to see businesses implementing an [accessibility overlay](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/accessibility-overlays/) into their websites. These are typically 3rd party plugins that promise “full WCAG compliance” and insert a floating button on the site which, when enabled, creates an overlay that offers text-to-speech, magnification, alternative navigation options, and other supposed features. #### Do accessibility overlays work? The short answer—No. These companies promise a lot but ultimately deliver little to no value to users. These overlays work by allowing a 3rd party to inject code into your website. Not only does this not fix any of the underlying accessibility issues on your website but it opens you up to a major security risk. Ultimately, almost everyone who would rely on the accessibility functions these tools claim to provide will already have a preferred configuration of software and assistive devices—configured to their individual needs and preferences—which 3rd party overlays are likely interfere with, causing more usability challenges not less. At the end of the day your users don’t want a custom accessibility solution; they just want your website to support the tools that already exist. Save your money on these integrations and invest it into improving the accessibility of your website at its core. --- ## Why assistive technology matters for small businesses Unless you have experienced a temporary or permanent disability that impacted your ability to use traditional navigation methods, you’re likely unaware of how inaccessible the digital world is. While the software and tools that exist offer disabled users incredible methods of interacting with and navigating websites, their ability to do so ultimately hinges on businesses ensuring their website supports these alternate experiences. Failing to support accessibility within your website can reduce your user base and weaken your website’s SEO and overall user experience. Understanding the tools and technology that many individuals with disabilities rely on—and the way they interact with websites—set’s you up to better understand the potential pain points and limitations that have been created within your businesses website. ### ADA & Legal Risk URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/ada-and-legal-risk/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:58:42.000Z Web accessibility lawsuits have been steadily increasing over the past decade—and the unfortunate reality is that most companies don’t pay attention to their digital accessibility until it’s too late. According to data from [Accessibillity.build](https://www.accessibility.build/research/accessibility-lawsuits?ref=accelerateux.com) 2025 federal filings for accessibility lawsuits have increased by 27.1% from the previous year. --- ## The legal foundation The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was originally written in 1960, long before the existence of mobile apps and websites. For a long time, digital accessibility was only informally recognized by the DOJ because of this. Historically however, courts have chosen to interpret [Title III of the ADA](https://www.ada.gov/law-and-regs/regulations/title-iii-regulations/?ref=accelerateux.com)—related to the accessibility of public spaces—as applying to websites and digital services. While the DOJ promoted adoption of WCAG standards as its interpretation of digital accessibility, there was a murkiness to the legal responsibilities around it. In 2024 however that began to change, and the DOJ formally ruled to include web accessibility as a [Title II requirement of the ADA](https://www.ada.gov/law-and-regs/regulations/title-ii-2010-regulations/?ref=accelerateux.com); all government entities are now required to adhere to WCAG guidelines. This was a notable turning point for digital accessibility, reinforces the precedent that applies Title III to non-government entities, and is the first step to fully codifying digital accessibility into law. --- ## Does my website have to be compliant? As mentioned above, despite the DOJ not yet ruling on making digital accessibility a formal part of the ADA’s Title III requirements, most court systems interpret Title III—which applies to any public facing business—as being applicable to any business’s public facing website. Basically, if you run a business and that business has a website—it needs to be accessible. A lot of business owners make the mistake of thinking that only large businesses need to worry about digital accessibility, but this is a myth. In reality, the size of a business or a website does not matter; the nature of your business and its website does. According to [Accessibility.build](https://www.accessibility.build/research/accessibility-lawsuits?ref=accelerateux.com) businesses in the e-commerce and retail industries have the highest risk of lawsuit—accounting for 70% of US federal filings in 2025\. Second, was the food and beverage industry, which was responsible for 21% of US federal filings that year. It’s important for organizations in these spaces to be aware of this additional level of risk. --- ## How legal complaints and lawsuits actually happen Accessibility complaints related to websites and digital services are on the rise, and typically result from the following: - Law firms that automate scanning websites to flag common failures and identify potential compliance issues at scale. - Individual users who had a personal experience can file complaints directly to the DOJ or their state agencies. - Competitors or advocacy organizations that flag and file complaints on other, non-compliant websites. Common technical failures that may result in a compliant include missing alt text, inaccessible forms, caption-less video, and broken keyboard navigation. Once your site is identified as non-compliant, you may face a variety of legal actions. ### 1\. Demand letters Although not required to file a lawsuit, a demand letter—legal correspondence, from a legal representative—is typically the first contact a business receives. Demand letters notify a business that their website is in violation of the ADA and request remediation or settlement. There are increasing numbers of law firms distributing these letters en masse; increasing the likelihood of your business eventually receiving one. If you receive a demand letter, don’t panic. A demand letter does not automatically mean a lawsuit has or will be filed. It is important that you don’t ignore the letter however—failing to respond or address the accessibility issues on your website may increase the likelihood that legal action is taken. ### 2\. Federal lawsuits It is important to note that the ADA does not require any prior notice—such as a demand letter—to be sent before filing a federal lawsuit. While plaintiffs cannot sue for monetary damages in accessibility related federal lawsuits your business may be held responsible for fixing the identified issues and covering the plaintiffs attorney fees. Regardless, the costs associated with these settlements can still be significant. Across the board, the out-of-court settlement costs averaged $30,000, court judgements resulted in settlements that averaged $85,000, and class action settlements averaged $400,000\. The added expense of making your website compliant now will be much more affordable than the cost of settling a lawsuit later. ### 3\. State level claims Some states have passed additional legislation and many allow additional monetary claims. An example of these are California’s Unruh Act. This act recognizes that inaccessible websites constitute a denial of full and equal access as required by state statue. Unlike federal cases, this act is an example of state legislation that allows plaintiffs to recover additional monetary damages—including a minimum of $4,000 per violation. State legislation typically applies to any website that is available to consumers in that state—regardless of where your business is located. The Ulruh act from California is one such example of the additional financial risk that failing to invest in an accessible website can open your business to. --- ## The role of WCAG in legal cases As mentioned previously, both the DOJ and the US court system uses WCAG Level AA as the standard for measuring a website’s legal compliance. The biggest risk to your website is doing nothing at all—your site does not have to be perfectly compliant to reduce your risk; the ability to demonstrate a good-faith effort to your website’s compliance will go far to protect you from a lawsuit. ### What does reduce risk A lack of understanding, or lack of awareness, is not an excuse for a non-compliant website. But, the following actions will go a long way: - Being able to show genuine, documented effort towards identifying and remediating accessibility issues in accordance with WCAG Level AA standards. - Having a public accessibility statement on your website that gives an accurate reflection of your website’s compliance status and provides a direct method of contact for users to report issues. - Making sure you have a documented and accessible process for receiving and responding to user’s accessibility complaints. - An ongoing practice of proactively auditing and working towards improving your website’s accessibility compliance outside of single-issue, reactive corrections. ### What does not reduce risk - Posting an accessibility state alone will not product you. Be prepared to be able to demonstrate how you’ve supported the claims made in said statement, and any ongoing efforts to monitor and improve your website’s accessibility. - Installing an [accessibility overlay](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/accessibility-overlays/) or widget does not improve accessibility. Despite claims made by the companies offering them, these “solutions” do not provide legitimate accessibility value. In fact, ADA related lawsuits related to accessibility overlays are on the rise, and the [FTC is beginning to take action](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-order-requires-online-marketer-pay-1-million-deceptive-claims-its-ai-product-could-make-websites?ref=accelerateux.com) against the companies behind them for deceptive marketing and false claims. - One-time audits without following through on remediation or establishing ongoing review processes may help your website accessibility but still leaves you open to risk. --- ## What to do if you receive a demand letter This article and the guidance provided by AccelerateUX should not be considered legal advice. Our goal here is to help business owners become more aware of what digital accessibility is and how to begin approaching, understanding, and improving the accessibility of your own websites. Many websites can reduce or eliminate their risk of an ADA lawsuit or legal repercussions simply by making a demonstrable effort to be aware of and adhere to accessible design and development standards. That said, if you have or ever receive a demand letter your should take it seriously. As is standard when any legal action arises you should *not* publicly respond or engage in online discourse about the claims, and we advise you to consult an attorney with experience in ADA and digital accessibility litigation to advise on next steps. --- ## Why understanding legal risk matters for small businesses As we mentioned above, having a publicly accessible website inherently opens you up to a certain degree of legal risk regarding its digital accessibility and compliance with the ADA. This is not meant to scare you but rather to inform you of an aspect of risk many businesses still don’t know about. While the legal risks reviewed in this article are real, they are also easily managed. Remember, digital accessibility compliance isn’t measured as an all-or-nothing—putting pressure or over-emphasis on achieving perfection isn’t realistic or sustainable. Rather, reducing your risk should be about making consistent effort and the ability to demonstrate, in good-faith, the progress you’ve made towards improving your website’s accessibility. ### Accessibility Overlays URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/accessibility-overlays/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:21:46.000Z As accessibility lawsuits increase, and awareness around the importance of digital accessibility rises, the number of businesses implementing accessibility overlays have increased as well. Accessibility overlays are marketed as a comprehensive “solution” to ensuring legal compliance. While these tools often offer impressive statements, touting benefits like “100% compliance” and a seemingly impressive range of functionality, many of their marketing claims are largely impossible. Across the industry most experts, advocates, and individuals with disabilities widely recommend that businesses should avoid adding these tools to their websites. --- ## How accessibility overlays work These products are usually a snipped of code, called a script, that gets added directly to a website’s code or injected via plugin. They typically add a floating action button, or similar element, onto the website. This button then opens a menu of accessibility options such as changing the individual website’s text size, contrast, cursor size, and more. --- ## What accessibility overlays claim Accessibility overlays are often marketed to small businesses as a fast, affordable, one-time solution to accessibility compliance. The promises made by these companies are enticing—but often promise a level of result, or compliance, that would be difficult if not impossible for any website to actually achieve and effectively maintain. These claims typically involve things like: - Automatically detecting and repairing accessibility without changing the underlying website. - Providing complete WCAG compliance or protection from ADA related lawsuits. - Replacing the need for any manual remediation or development support. --- ## The reality of accessibility overlays Despite the enticing promises, accessibility overlays are widely considered—by leading universities, accessibility organizations, and individuals with disabilities—to be completely ineffectual. In fact, having an accessibility overlay on your website can actually block disabled user’s existing accessibility devices and open your business up to additional legal risk. ### What overlays can do While most of the promises advertised are false claims, accessibility overlays are able to do things like: - Provide some user facing controls—such as the ability to change the web page’s font-size, color contrast, and disable animations/moving content. - Catch some common automatically detectable issues. Even with these legitimate features, an accessibility overlay doesn’t provide value. The accessibility settings to modify the display of your website’s front-end already exist at the device’s browser level and allow a user to have their accessibility preferences applied across their entire web browsing experience. The majority of disabled users do not need or want to have to apply these adaptations to every website individually—not to mention the overrides from an accessibility overlay can wind up conflicting with a user’s existing browser accommodations. As for the ability to automatically flag those high level accessibility issues, there are better tools that exist. Numerous, highly reputable, free tools are already available to run an automated audit of your website—just remember that any automated accessibility scan still won’t catch 100% of problems. ### What overlays cannot do One of the main reasons we, and most experts (other than companies selling these tools) advise *against* using accessibility overlays is due to how little, if any, value they actually provide. The claims may sound enticing, but the [FTC has recently filed charges against one such tool for misrepresentation](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-order-requires-online-marketer-pay-1-million-deceptive-claims-its-ai-product-could-make-websites?ref=accelerateux.com), and we expect others will follow. It’s important to be aware of some of the biggest promises that accessibility overlays can’t actually deliver on. #### **Claim:** Accessibility overlays will fix issues on your website. **Reality:** Depending on the issue, accessibility overlays *may* be able to inject code that appears to fix an accessibility issue, but they are far from comprehensive solutions, and the root issues remains on your underlying website. This means that any positive changes the overlay does make aren’t permenant—if the company shuts down or if you choose to change tools, you’ll loose any of the “corrections” they had claimed to provide. We recommend that money is invested in fixing issues directly within your site instead. #### **Claim:** Accessibility overlays can provide 100% compliance. **Reality:** There is no AI, or accessibility overlay that can reliably interpret the purpose and context of content like images, forms, or other interactive elements. Manual, human review is still needed for this part of accessibility evaluations. #### **Claim:** Accessibility overlays can make any site usable for screen reader or keyboard navigation users. **Reality:** Individuals who rely on these alternative navigation tools already have dedicated software and devices they use; they do not want to switch to your website’s individual on-site tools. Not to mention, overlays can interfere with their ability to use their preferred tools at all, and there are numerous structural, semantic, or contextual aspects of a screen-reader or keyboard accessible experience that an accessibility overlay simply won’t be able to identify or inject adequate support for. --- ## The case against accessibility overlays ### Evidence from the accessibility community #### 1\. Experts advice against using accessibility overlays Numerous legal experts, like [disability rights lawyer Lainey Feinfold, advises against implementing accessibility add-ons](https://www.lflegal.com/2020/08/quick-fix/?ref=accelerateux.com), and hundreds of accessibility professionals have endorsed public statements like the [Overlay Fact Sheet](https://overlayfactsheet.com/en/?ref=accelerateux.com), cautioning against their use. #### 2\. Surveys show accessibility overlays don’t work Individuals with disabilities and users of assistive technology consistently report that overlays are ineffective—with evidence showing they can actually cause more issues then they solve. According to a [survey from WebAIM](https://webaim.org/projects/practitionersurvey3/?ref=accelerateux.com) 72% of respondents with disabilities rated these add-ons as not at all, or not very effective. The [Perkins School for the Blind](https://www.perkins.org/resource/do-accessibility-overlays-work/?ref=accelerateux.com)lists specific concerns about accessibility overlays such as introducing problems that didn’t exist, creating privacy concerns, and exposing private details about user’s disability status and specifics. #### 3\. Accessibility overlays consistently fail accessibility testing Testing results from the [University of Michigan](https://accessibility.umich.edu/strategy-policy/um-guidance/overlays?ref=accelerateux.com) found that along with failing to fix most accessibility issues overlays were also likely to introduce additional issues and accessibility barriers. These issues include: - Disrupting users preferred browser settings - Preventing use of existing accessibility tools - Inserting incorrect labels for fields or interactive elements - Causing unpredictable conflicts with existing website code, blocking existing content and functionality, and crashing pages - Creating privacy and security issues by introducing website vulnerabilities and collecting information about user’s assistive technology use without their consent. ### Evidence from the legal record #### 1\. Increasing legal action against accessibility overlay companies The claims made by companies promoting accessibility overlays are blatantly false, and the courts have begun to take notice. in 2022 [ADP settled a lawsuit](https://www.lflegal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ADP-and-SF-Lighthouse-settlement-agreement.pdf?ref=accelerateux.com) related to their use of an accessibility overlay and barriers it create that prevented blind individuals to use the website independently. Ultimately, ADP agreed to end its overlay use, made substantial improvements to it’s website compliance in accordance to WCAG standards, and brought in an outside expert to work directly with users with disabilities to improve the solution. In other scenarios like the [2024 class action lawsuit](https://commlawgroup.com/2024/accessibe-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-alleged-misrepresentation-of-ada-compliance-and-ai-accessibility-capabilities/?ref=accelerateux.com) against the accessibility overlay provider AccessiBe, companies who have been negatively impacted by the ineffectiveness of accessibility overlays are starting to fight.. #### 2\. Relying on accessibility overlays leaves your business open to lawsuits According to [AudioEye](https://www.audioeye.com/post/nearly-4-in-10-businesses-sued-for-accessibility-thought-they-were-protected-here-s-what-went-wrong/?ref=accelerateux.com) almost 40% of companies sued for website accessibility compliance already had an accessibility tool—like an accessibility overlay—in place. Implementing these services does not decrease your business’s legal, if anything it opens up new ways to increase it. #### 3\. The DOJ recommends against relying on accessibility overlays While the [DOJ’s web accessibility guidance](https://www.ada.gov/resources/web-guidance/?ref=accelerateux.com) does not explicitly address the negative implications of accessibility tools, they do caution that businesses should be careful with how they utilize the services. Any automated accessibility tool should not be used in isolation, but rather paired with manual testing and custom remediation. --- ## Why accessibility overlays are being used These services lure businesses, often those with lower-budgets and limited resources, with promises of an affordable, easy solution to WCAG compliance. The companies behind accessibility overlays often use legal-sounding language and the results of simple, automated testing to falsify their effectiveness—while hiding the more subjective or contextual aspects of compliance. As a result, business owners are given a false sense of confidence as to the accessibility of their website. Many stop here, not realizing their accessibility issues have not been solved. Achieving legitimate accessibility is not a one-size-fits all solution; it requires ongoing attention, custom evaluations, and intentional solutions. --- ## The risk of false confidence One of our main concerns for businesses that rely on accessibility overlays is not that they’ll fail compliance—they will—it’s that they give business owners and teams a false sense of security. If you believe your website accessibility issues have been solved you’ll stop looking for problems and concerns. This can often delay actual remediation until there is a demand letter or lawsuit, at which point the cost and the repercussions are much more severe. --- ## What to do instead of using accessibility overlays Layering tools on top of your website will only further complicate its accessibility and delay actual remediation. The best path to genuine accessibility is to fix issues within the website’s underlying code and content. Instead of investing money in a tool that provides little to no real value, focus your efforts on the following: ### 1\. Perform an audit: Conduct an automated accessibility test alongside of manual testing to evaluate for legitimate problems and scope potential solutions. ### 2\. Prioritize remediation: Legal risk often increases related to the impact an issue creates. As such, you should work to remediate the most severe accessibility issues first—especially if you are working under resource or budget constraints. ### 3\. Collect user feedback: A careful accessibility statement, and genuine process of collecting user feedback for remediation will be more impactful (and likely cost effective) than any accessibility overlay or other add-on. ### 4\. Budget appropriately: ADA compliance is a requirement for your business—and should be prioritized like any other necessary expenses. Make sure you adjust your budget to allow for regular, routine, and ongoing accessibility attention; it’s not a one-time expense. --- ## Why understanding accessibility overlays matter for small businesses Accessibility overlays are one of the most aggressively marketed—and least effective—products in the accessibility space; often preying on business owner’s fear of legal risk and lack of knowledge. Accessibility overlays provide such little remediation value you are effectively throwing away money that could be spent on actual remediation and accessibility improvements. If you do choose to purchase an accessibility overlay, or other add-on, you should be informed as to what it is actually able to provide for your website vs. what it cannot—this is the difference between reducing risk and creating it. ### Cognitive Accessibility URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/cognitive-accessibility/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:21:09.000Z Visual and functional accessibility issues are often easier to identify, test, and correct. But it’s important to be aware that not every barrier of use on a website is the result of a visual or physical limitation. Some users can see your website perfectly and operate it without difficulty—but they may still struggle to use it effectively because of how information is written, organized, or presented. Cognitive accessibility is one of the most overlooked dimensions of accessible design, and the area where businesses are likely to be more unaware of their website’s point of failures. --- ## What cognitive accessibility is Cognitive accessibility refers to a website’s ability to be understood, navigated, and used by people with a wide range of cognitive and neurological differences. Unlike visual and functional failures, cognitive barriers are impacted by comprehension, memory, attention, and processing; not perception or operation. Despite affecting a wide and diverse population, cognitive accessibility is often the last area addressed in accessibility work. --- ## Who cognitive accessibility affects ### Learning disabilities Most people with learning disabilities are completely capable of navigating and using websites independently, but they may be impeded, frustrated, or excluded by issues like poor writing styles, cluttered layouts, and font styles. Examples of common learning disabilities that can be affected by barriers to cognitive accessibility include: - **Dyslexia:** A condition that affects an individual’s reading ability, making it challenging to accurately recognize words and process text. Formatting choices like center aligned paragraphs; underlined, bold, or italic text; and all-caps lettering, are among the design considerations that increase a dyslexic user’s difficulty. Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disorders in adults. - **Dyscalculia:** Colloquially referred to as “number dyslexia” or “math dyslexia” this is a learning disorder that causes difficulties with understanding numeric values, quantities, and mathematic concepts. The condition can make it challenging to handle money and manage time. It can also affect a person’s ability to remember numeric related information such as quantities on a shopping list, PIN numbers, and instructions. Rounding to whole numbers (unless decimals are required), providing explicit context when presenting numeric information, and presenting numbers with appropriate spacing can help users with dyscalculia to better process information. ### Attention and executive function differences Conditions like ADHD can affect an individual’s ability to sustain attention, their working memory, and the ability to filter relevant from irrelevant information. Users with this condition may be more likely to loose their place while reading, struggle to complete multi-step processes (especially if the length of the process is unknown), and be pulled off task by visually distracting elements. Common mistakes like auto-playing media, busy layouts, and vague call-to-actions can negatively affect these user’s experiences. ### Memory and processing conditions Often developed as a result of brain injuries, stroke, and dementia; these conditions affect someone’s memory processing speed and ability to follow complex sequences. Users with these conditions may find themselves having to re-read content, straining to remember information or actions from previous pages, and struggling with unfamiliar interactions. Common issues that make experiences more difficult for these users include sessions that expire unexpectedly, actions an forms with no confirmation or feedback when completed, and inconsistent navigation. ### Autism spectrum This condition can cause variation in how language is processed—causing literal interpretation of figurative language, challenges with understanding ambiguity, and creating a preference for predictability. Common issues rise when idioms and colloquilisms re used without explanation (this can also be challenging for non-native language users), unexpected interaction patterns, and unclear instructions. All users, and especially those on the autism spectrum, benefit from explicit, literal language and consistent, predictable interfaces within an experience. ### Anxiety and mental health conditions These conditions can impact how users react to uncertainty, error states, and pressure. Common issues that can negatively affect these users include implementing time limits, showing alarming or extraneous error messages, and failing to define the expected result of an action. ### Situational and temporary cognitive load Cognitive capacity can be temporarily impacted for any user—impacted by stress, fatigue, distraction, and multitasking. Any user who is tired or distracted will be experiencing reduced processing capacity and is more likely to become overwhelmed, frustrated, or suffer decision fatigue. Ensuring your website content is clear, well-organized, and written in plain-language will help reduce the impact of these factors and facilitate the experience for all users. --- ## Common problems for cognitive accessibility ### Dense, complex writing Try to avoid long sentences, passive voice, and industry jargon that excludes and confuses users. These issues can be particularly damaging on key pages like services, pricing, contact, and checkout. ### Inconsistent navigation and layout Whenever elements like menus, buttons, and page structures shift or change between pages, users can become disoriented and confused—especially those with existing memory or processing challenges. Predictability is an essential aspect of creating a quality and accessible website, regardless of the user. ### Unclear error messages Validation that only states that an error exists—but does not explain what the error is or how to correct it—can cause unnecessary friction, frustration, and mental load. This is particularly impactful for users already dealing with anxiety, learning disabilities, or processing differences. ### Multi-step processes Users with attention or memory challenges are more likely to abandon lengthy processes, especially if the length and requirements are unclear. Splitting up flows like signup, checkout, and booking into multi-step sequences is becoming increasingly popular. While some complicated processes benefit and become easier to use when broken into parts, doing so unnecessarily may make a process feel longer and more ardous to complete. Whenever you have a multi-step process on your website make sure to include clear progress indicators and insights into the remaining steps to help prevent users from becoming overwhelmed and abandoning. ### Auto-playing and moving content In addition to the potential to impact your website’s performance and SEO, auto-playing audio and video media can be jarring to a user’s senses—effectively hijacking their attention. This can be especially disorienting for users with ADHD or sensory sensitivities. If there is animated or automatically moving/progressing content it is important to provide a way for users to pause or disable the motion. Being unable to do so can make it incredibly difficult to focus, and for some users impossible to read or focus on a task. ### Visual complexity Too many competing elements, calls to actions, or visual styles within a page can overwhelm users; especially those with an already limited capacity for attention. --- ## Situational examples of cognitive accessibility While accessible design will always improve the overall user experience, regardless of disability, cognitive accessibility is an area where that impact becomes particularly significant. While there are numerous conditions and disabilities that impact an individual’s focus and comprehension, *everyone’s* focus and comprehension is improved by accommodations like: - Short, clear sentences improve everyone’s reading speed - Clear instructions and explicit language makes task recognition and completion easier for all. - All users (especially new ones) will be able to navigate more easily and confidently when menus and layouts are consistent site-wide. In short, wiring and formatting your website to support cognitive accessibility doesn’t mean oversimplifying it for some users at the expense of others—everyone benefits. --- ## Why cognitive accessibility matters for small businesses Cognitive accessibility failures are less likely to create the clear cut barriers (and consequently, complaints) like visual and functional accessibility issues do. Rather, users experience frustration and annoyance—maybe blaming your website, maybe blaming themselves—and abandon. Unlike other accessibility issues that may require more design/development support, these issues can be largely improved through content, writing, and text formatting decisions. This puts a majority of cognitive accessibility improvements within easy reach of small business owners to improve and implement themselves. Ultimately, cognitive accessibility improves the ability of *all* users to understand and navigate your website better. A website that is easier to used is more likely to experience better conversions and longer visitor retention. ### Mobile-First Design URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/mobile-first-design/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:08:44.000Z Most business owners plan, build, edit, review and *think* about their website on a computer (laptop or desktop). Barring some exceptions, your user’s are usually viewing it on their phones. Mobile-first design is one of the most-repeated phrases in the industry and in conversations about website best practices. You’ve probably heard it before, maybe even repeated it, without fully understanding what it means or how it should impact the process of building and managing a website. --- ## The traditional approach: Just like desktops came long before mobile devices, the web design process was traditionally centered around designing for a wide, desktop view. As variation in desktops grew, and laptops followed by mobile phones and tablets were introduced, it became common practice to take desktop-centered designs and adapt them to display on narrower mobile screens. While this results in websites that may be mobile-friendly, it can be challenging to adapt content and interaction patterns built solely for desktop in a way that makes them equally usable on a mobile device. --- ## The mobile-first approach: At this point the majority of websites see the bulk of traffic coming from mobile devices, and it doesn’t make sense for the primary view of a website to be the adapted, afterthought version. The common solution to this is to design mobile-first: planning and designing the primary, optimal experience, for mobile viewports and then scaling it up to display on desktop devices. While this is more effective—it’s much easier to move content from a small screen to a larger screen that it is the other way—we find this approach can still fail to account for differences in expected interaction patterns, and can result in pages that feel sparse and ungrounded. --- ## The adaptive approach: Here at AccelerateUX we’ve developed what we’ve coined an adaptive-approach to design. Whenever you design solely-focused on one view, adapting after the fact, those secondary implementations will always be a weaker iteration of the primary. To ensure the strongest possible design across multiple devices sizes, we’ve established a philosophy of designing from the perspective of adaptability. ### Adaptive design in-practice Instead of focusing on one device (and then scaling the finished design) we design across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices in tandem. For every component, content block, and page we’re immediately evaluating how it will grow, shrink, restructure, or be swapped out based on the size of the screen. Working in this style means that one experience is never getting deprioritized and the potential need to rework patterns that wind up difficult or impossible to translate across devices later in the process is eliminated—ultimately saving time, money, and effort across the entire effort. #### Interested in learning more? Curious about how our adaptive approach to design could benefit your business or design practice? Reach out for a workshop. [Get in touch ](#tally-open=5BDMVM&tally-layout=modal&tally-overlay=1&tally-emoji-animation=none&reference=interest%3A%20adaptive%20design%20workshop) ## Why a mobile website is important for your business ### 1\. Over half of global web traffic comes from mobile devices. According to [Statista](https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-mobile-devices/?srsltid=AfmBOopPeyFHtdt3BWLznWXXzCXRE-%5FPKggw8zXc69MkvIcg7-0Ll1mV&ref=accelerateux.com) mobile phones made up 62.5% of global web traffic by mid-2025, and this number has been steadily growing since 2020\. There can be exceptions to the rule so it’s always worth checking your analytics to see the device breakdown of your specific website. That said, it’s likely safe to assume that the majority your traffic is coming from mobile devices as well. By *not* prioritizing the mobile version of your website you’re effectively ensuring that most of your visitors are getting the worst version of your website. Correcting this is likely to improve retention and conversions. ### 2\. Its good for your SEO Between 2016 to 2023 Google converted its website indexing to be mobile-first, openly shifting to prioritize mobile websites in its search rankings. Once again, by not prioritizing your mobile website you could be affecting your search ranking and ultimately your business’s discoverability online. --- ## What a poor mobile experience looks like Even if you think your site is mobile-friendly, or feel that it “works well enough”, if you haven’t intentionally prioritized mobile optimization it likely presents some of the following issues: - Text that’s too small to be properly read without pinching and zooming. - Buttons that are too small, or too close together to accurately tap. - Navigation menus that don’t translate to mobile making it difficult or impossible to explore. - Images and content that break the layout, overflow, or even overlap other content causing readability or interaction issues. - Forms that are tedious or challenging to complete on small screens. - Common misconceptions ### 1\. “My site works on mobile” is good enough A site that technically functions does not mean it functions well. Remember, any unnecessary friction or issue you present to the user impacts their perception of your brand and their ultimate willingness to convert. Having a good mobile website means taking the time and effort to prioritize it. ### 2\. Assuming customers will switch to desktop for “important” tasks like bookings or purchases For a lot of individuals a mobile device is their only access to the internet. If you chose to remove functionality from mobile because it’s easier than implementing it you’re loosing customers, guaranteed. While some users might switch devices when necessary, the majority will simply find a version of your product or service that doesn’t require them to. According to the [Pew Research Center’s Mobile Fact Sheet](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/?ref=accelerateux.com) as of 2025 16% of American adults own a smartphone, but do not have an at-home internet subscription. When looking at specific demographics—such as age, race, income, etc—this value may fluctuate. #### Smartphone reliance by age\* | 18-29 | 65+ | 50-64 | 30-49 | | ----- | --- | ----- | ----- | | 27% | 17% | 15% | 11% | #### Smartphone reliance by race & ethnicity\* | Hispanic | Black | White | Asian *(english-speaking population only)* | | -------- | ----- | ----- | ------------------------------------------ | | 28% | 19% | 13% | 11% | #### Smartphone reliance by income\* | Less than $30,000 | $30,000 to $69,999 | $70,000 to $99,999 | $100,000 or more | | ----------------- | ------------------ | ------------------ | ---------------- | | 34% | 19% | 10% | 4% | #### Smartphone reliance by community\* | Urban Communities | Rural Communities | Suburban Communities | | ----------------- | ----------------- | -------------------- | | 20% | 19% | 12% | \*These numbers are accurate as of 2025, per the [Pew Research Center’s Mobile Fact Sheet](https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/?ref=accelerateux.com) ### 3\. Trusting a website builder to automatically handle mobile optimization While a lot of website builders and templates have gotten better at automatically adapting content and layout across devices you’ll likely still need to configure things like changes to text sizes, margins, and even make manual layout adjustments. Additionally, don’t trust that the mobile preview in your website builder is accurate to how your site will look across different types of mobile screens. This is especially true of website builders that offer an entirely free form drag and drop editor (we’re looking at you Squarespace). While your layout might look perfect in their editor view, if you look at it on a screen that’s even a few pixels smaller/larger if might have major rendering issues. While these issues *may* be able to be fixed in the web builder’s software, a lot of times custom CSS is the only way to truly fine-tune and ensure a layout adapts properly across devices. #### Get a checkup Struggling to evaluate your website across different devices? We can help you establish clarity and confidence in how your site shows up. [Get in touch ](#tally-open=5BDMVM&tally-layout=modal&tally-overlay=1&tally-emoji-animation=none&reference=interest%3A%responsive%20checkup) ### 4\. Overlooking mobile when making changes Once your mobile site is optimized and working as it should be, make sure it stays a priority every time you update content or add to it. Any time something is edited or new content goes up on your website make sure you’re doublechecking that it looks ok on mobile. It’s easy to forget about the mobile site when you’re primarily working in a desktop-based view of it, but any changes you make will impact the mobile version—and have the potential to mess up other aspects of the layout. ### The Fold URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/the-fold/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:10:01.000Z In traditional print media, the area literally above the fold of a newspaper was reserved for the most important stories—those headlines were the only section of a paper guaranteed to be seen, and the papers one shot at grabbing a potential reader’s attention to generate enough interest to pick up the paper and buy it. Once you grabbed the reader and got them to unfold the paper they’d see the content below-the-fold—still interesting, still important (just maybe not as important as that main headline). This content was the second most likely to be seen, with the interior pages being less likely to be read but often containing the continuation of front-page articles, as well regular and consistent sections of content—think weekly obituaries, sports scores, and TV listings—that people turn to with explicit intention. When the world wide web started (remember, desktop only) the behaviors in which people thought of and interacted with a website aligned to the way they interacted with the then-dominant and familiar medium of newsprint. ![Diagram comparing ‘above the fold’ in print and on the web: a folded newspaper with the visible top section highlighted next to desktop, tablet, and mobile screens showing the portion visible before scrolling.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/7e/ac7e007d-bcd0-413e-af34-230badcb1975/content/images/2026/07/Above-the-Fold.png) Above-the-fold: non-visible content hidden ![Diagram comparing ‘below the fold’ in print and on the web: an unfolded newspaper revealing additional sections below the fold next to full-page website layouts for desktop, tablet, and mobile that extend beyond the initial screen.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/7e/ac7e007d-bcd0-413e-af34-230badcb1975/content/images/2026/07/Full-Content.png) Below-the-fold: non-visible content revealed The area of a homepage, viewable without scrolling was your one shot to convey value to a visitor, because they likely weren’t going to scroll of their own accord. As such, marketing efforts were hyper focused on showing the most possible content above the fold, and while this may have been necessary in the past, it’s created a lingering misconception about modern day behavior on the web. --- ## What above-the-fold means online While the term technically refers to the area of a webpage immediately visible on page load, without any scrolling, the web—unlike a physical newspaper—doesn’t have a fixed definition for what size this region will be. Designing for the web means designing in a way that is fluid and adaptable across an increasingly vast array of screen sizes. Every device, browser, and screen resolution creates a different cutoff point and your website lives across all of them—from a tiny smartphone screen to a jumbo desktop monitor. Because of this, a fold on a desktop computer will be drastically different than that on a tablet or a smartphone; and your approach to how and what is visible above the fold should adapt as well. ### Less is sometimes more Like we mentioned earlier, the advice to put as much information above-the-fold as possible made sense at a time. But that time was when our model of media consumption was newspaper first, internet second; and devices were limited to desktop PC’s with a pretty narrow deviation in display size. At that time users were still learning *how* to scroll and the understanding of dynamic content was in its infancy—that time, for better or for worse, no longer exists. Today, media is consumed dynamically and digitally, and our methods of interacting with digital content reflects the shift that has occurred. Our consumption of the internet itself has transitioned to be predominately mobile device driven where narrow screens have made scrolling a required and default behavior. This shift means there is less pressure to make sure you present *everything* you want the user to see right away. Research into modern behavior shows people will scroll, as long as you give them a reason to do so. This shift in behavior shows how mental models and actions evolve with the introduction of new mediums and technologies. It’s important to remember that what works today may not be the case in a year or few years down the line. This is why it’s important to treat your website like a living artifact—it should evolve, grow, and expand as your business, users, and the world around it does. --- ## What to put above-the-fold Think of the region above-the-fold, typically referred to as the page hero, less like a billboard; and more like a hook. Give your users a sample of your brand’s personality and value, and give them a strong action or hint at what’s in the rest of the site to draw them forward. Remember, the goal isn’t to fit everything in this space—it’s to create enough interest to get people to engage further. ### What to communicate To help you filter out what should be featured in a modern hero section, focus on the following three objectives: 1. Does it communicate who you are and what you offer? 2. Does it establish trust at a glance? 3. Does it provide visitors with a clear action, an obvious next-step for them to take? --- ## Common mistakes to avoid ### 1\. Trying to put too much information above-the-fold This is a common mistake, often born out of anxiety. Trying to communicate everything in this space will leave it cluttered, overwhelming, and may actually confuse visitors into taking no action at all. ### 2\. Hiding your most important call-to-action A strong, direct, call-to-action is not pushy, even it sometimes feels that way on your own website. Remember, your hero should communicate your strongest value-prop or offer, and it’s not pushy or aggressive to present your strongest hook first. If you don’t, you’ll be loosing people before they ever get a chance to see it. ### 3\. Using carousels as a way to get more content above-the-fold This is a common cheat, and it’s doing you zero favors. Carousels can have a time and place but we promise—it’s never in your hero. People land on a website ready to scroll, not sit and watch slides of different content go by. Implementing a carousel header is only diluting what should be the *single* strongest statement you have to make. ### 4\. Ignoring the content below-the-fold There’s so much pressure to pack as much value into the hero region we see a lot of businesses treat the rest of their homepage as an afterthought. If the area above-the-fold is where you *tell* the user that thing that makes you so great, the rest of your landing page needs to start *showing* them all the ways your hook is true. ## Worried your hook isn't right? Above-the-fold content is a great area to test. You can easily track how people interact with this content and your landing page as a whole, A/B testing different variations to find out which one works the best. Interested but not sure how to get started? Reach out, we’d love to help! [Get in touch ](#tally-open=5BDMVM&tally-layout=modal&tally-overlay=1&tally-emoji-animation=none&reference=interest%3A%fold%20testing) ### UI vs. UX URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/ui-vs-ux/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T14:05:13.000Z If you though these were interchangeable terms you wouldn’t be alone. User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) as terms and concepts are frequently conflated. While the are very different, the distinction can be hard to immediately grasp. You have remembered learning in early geometry lessons that all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares…We like to use this comparison to quickly illustrate the distinction between UI and UX. ![On the left is an illustration of several rectangles in different sizes, showing varied widths and heights. One of these rectangles is also a square. To the right is same illustration, but all of the rectangles are faded out except for the one that is a square.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/7e/ac7e007d-bcd0-413e-af34-230badcb1975/content/images/2026/06/rectangles-v-squares.png) Rectangles vs. Squares Similar to how a square is a specific type of rectangle, your UI is a specific aspect of your overall UX. There are many more aspects to a good user experience than only the user interface design. In fact, it’s often argued that the UI is typically the least critical part of ensuring a strong UX is in place. ![An illustration of several rectangles in different sizes, showing varied widths and heights. Each rectangle is individually labeled with one of the following terms: Research, Psychology, and Analytics. Finally, a square rectangle is labeled Look and Feel. To the right is the same illustration, but the rectangles labeled Research, Psychology, and Analytics are all faded out. Only the square rectangle labeled “Look and Feel” remains fully opaque.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/7e/ac7e007d-bcd0-413e-af34-230badcb1975/content/images/2026/06/ux-v-ui.png) User Experiences vs. User Interface Don’t get us wrong, a good UI is important—it can improve brand perception and create trust. A good UI might sway a user into giving your product or platform a try, but if the UI isn’t built on top of a strong foundational UX you’ll likely suffer from issues with conversions, retention, and reengagement. Think of your UI as the final step in building a house. It’s the paint, the decor, the immutable quality that says “this belongs to my brand no one else's.” Just like a house, if there’s cracks in the foundation it’s going to fall apart—no amount of shiny finishings can fix that. To continue this analogy, your user experience is that foundation of what you’re building. It’s the architectural blueprints and the licensed contractors. It’s making sure the electricity is wired up before the drywall is hung, and making sure you have enough bathrooms to support the number of occupants that are going to live there. If you ignore these aspects when building a home it’s sage to say the project will have problems. At worst people won’t want to live there, and at best people won’t like living there very long. Now that we’ve defined why UI and UX are different entities let’s dive into *what* each of them really are. --- ## What is a User Interface? Your user interface, at the core, is everything a person can *see* and *touch* on a screen. Your UI design defines how your brand is applied across your website or product—it is the look and feel of the individual elements such as: - Buttons, menus, icons, colors, fonts, and spacing - Photography and illustrations - Sometimes, how content is arranged on a page. ![A light grey button with dark grey text, above it is a red “x” icon signifying that this button design has issues. Next to it is a bright blue button with white text, above it is a green “check” icon signifying that this button is the better option of the two.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/7e/ac7e007d-bcd0-413e-af34-230badcb1975/content/images/2026/06/Buttons.png) The grey button looks disabled and has low contrast. The blue button has higher contrast. This is an example of a UI decision. A lot of [visual accessibility](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/visual-accessibility/) issues are impacted by UI decisions. --- ## What is a User Experience UX can feel a lot harder to explain, and to understand. The result of UX is, simply, how a person *feels* when using a website, product, or service. While UI defines the look of single moments within an experience, UX defines the entire journey as whole. At a fundamental level UX works to evaluate and answer the following key questions: - Is this easy to use? - Can people find what they’re looking for or accomplish their goals? - Does the process make sense from start to finish? ### Functional Accessibility URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/functional-accessibility/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:52:43.000Z While most websites are built around the conventional use of computer mouse and keyboard, many people use alternative methods of navigating and interacting online—whether by keyboard, voice command, or switch device. Building a website that only supports traditional methods of input and navigation limits a significant group of people from interacting with your content and business. --- ## What is functional accessibility Defined simply, functional accessibility refers to whether or not a website can be operated by people with a wide range of physical and motor abilities. Functional accessibility is less about what a user perceives or understands, and more about how effectively they can operate it—through actions like clicking, scrolling, typing, submitting forms, and navigating. Aspects of functional and [visual accessibility](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/visual-accessibility/) can overlap, especially in regards to screen reader users. Where the barriers to visual accessibility relate more to the display and perception of information, barriers to functional accessibility relate to the interactions a user is able to perform. --- ## Who is affected by functional accessibility ### Motor and mobility disabilities Any conditions that affect the hands, arms, or fine motor control can impact a user’s ability to use traditional mouse and touch interactions on their devices. Conditions such as paralysis, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, limb differences, and more may render someone unable to use a mouse, limit their range of motion, or cause fatigue from repetitive input. While there are many alternate navigation methods, common solutions include using keyboards, mouth sticks, head pointers, eye tracking, voice control, and switch devices. ### Tremors and reduced precision Conditions like Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and essential tremors can affect the steadiness and precision of movement, even if an individual’s broader mobility remains unaffected. In these instances specific pain-points like small targets, hover-dependent menus, and drag interactions can pose significant barriers to use. In these instances, users may have hand function and even use a computer mouse—however, they’re more likely to rely on a keyboard as a primary or secondary source of navigation if there ability to precisely control a mouse is unreliable or if there symptoms fluctuate. ### Repetitive strain and chronic pain Common medical conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, and chronic pain may limit how long or intensively someone is able to use a mouse or keyboard. These individuals may find themselves switching between input methods depending on the day or task. For these conditions, the efficiency of a website may significantly impact them; unnecessary steps, redundant interactions, and slow response times can make their experience more difficult or painful. ### Temporary and situational motor limitations Many people, at some point in their lives, will experience a condition that creates a short-term accessibility challenge. Broken arms, hand injuries, and surgeries can all make a standard mouse difficult or impossible to use during recovery. It’s often not until someone experiences this that they realize just how inaccessible the digital world is. Even more common are every-day situations like a parent using a device while holding their child, or a person trying to multi-task while on a crowded train car—in both examples, the user is likely to experience limitations in their range of hand and arm movements. These are situational constraints that limit a users available input methods and may cause them to rely on voice or keyboard navigation. While these scenarios are not likely to be included in disability statistics, they are common and can create the same barriers within a website’s experience. --- ## Types of alternate navigation devices ### Switch devices These are physical pieces of hardware—typically with one or two physical buttons or “switches”—that allow users to scan through and make selections on a website. Switch devices often align to the experience of using the “tab” and “enter” keys while navigating with a keyboard. Similar to keyboard navigation, switch devices require that a user to be able to access all interactions without a mouse. ### Eye-tracking software This technology leverages a camera to track a user’s gaze and map it to a position onscreen—making adequately sized targets essential. While new advancements in technology are beginning to introduce capabilities like “dwell” which allows users to simulate hover effects, these modes are often optional and able to be turned on or off depending on a user’s preference. In order to properly support eye tracking experiences (and touch-focused mobile experiences in general) you should avoid any hover-only interactions. ### Sip and puff devices These devices use mouth and airway controls to command an interface. These are typically used by people with very limited to no limb function, and are impacted by the same constraints and requirements as switch devices and keyboard navigation. ### Voice command While users can utilize voice control in a variety of methods, full voice control navigation is another method employed by those with limited vision or mobility. Similar constraints to switch devices or keyboard navigation and screen readers apply. --- ## Barriers to functional accessibility ### Mouse-only interactions Many alternate methods of navigation require that interactions can be performed without a mouse. Examples of interactions that may be classified as “mouse-only” include: - Dropdown menus that only appear on hover and cannot be reached by keyboard or switch devices. - Drag-and-drop interfaces with no alternate keyboard support. - Custom interactive elements that haven’t had keyboard support built into them. Mouse-only interactions can also be problematic for mobile device and touch screen users. Similar to keyboard navigation, there is no sense of hover in a touch environment—so hover dependent interactions are also more likely to fail for these scenarios. ### Missing or invisible focus indicators When navigating a website via keyboard—or similar alternate navigation device—a visible highlight should appear to show which element is actively selected. Many sites still suppress this indicator for aesthetic reasons, leaving users who rely on alternate navigation tools unable to discern their location within a page. By default, browsers display a focus outline on all interactive elements. You can leave this as is, or apply custom styles; just make sure the focus state is obvious and draws the user’s attention. Having visible and logically presented focus interactions is one of the most common and most impactful areas of functional accessibility. ### Keyboard traps This occurs when a user’s focus enters an element—such as a modal, widget, or embedded functionality—but cannot escape, or move to another selectable element without using a mouse to do so. A user unable to use a mouse will be effectively barred from the rest of the page. Keyboard traps commonly occur in things like third-party chat widgets, booking tools, and embedded maps. ### Small or densely packed targets A target is the selectable area that triggers an element’s interaction. It’s important that targets be sized large enough and spaced an appropriate distance apart. Otherwise, it can be difficult to accurately trigger with the intended action for any user and especially for those with limited motor precision. Issues with target size are particularly common on mobile devices as touch interactions are inherently less precise than mouse clicks, and individuals with larger thumbs can struggle to click targets—even without any additional motor or precision difficulties. ### Time limits and timed interactions Users with loss of motor control or users of assistive tools, will typically take longer to interact with page content and complete tasks. Because of this, any forms or sessions that expire after a fixed period of time can create an accessibility barrier. Additional pain points include carousels and auto-advancing content that cannot be paused or controlled by the user. In these instances any users who needs additional time to process, navigate, or input information are effectively penalized. --- ## Why functional accessibility matters for small businesses Functional accessibility issues can be harder to identify and harder to fix as they are often caused by issues in the structure and code of the website. While they may seem more invisible, their impact can be debilitating. Issues with functional accessibility don’t just make a user’s experience harder, they can make it impossible—essentially disabling a website for someone relying on assistive technology. The functionality that enables keyboard navigation is particularly critical, as it is a foundational requirement that simultaneously affects screen readers, voice control, and alternate navigation devices. Many of the technical requirements for functional accessibility and keyboard navigation are aligned with SEO best practices—meaning ignoring these issues has the potential to hurt your business two-fold. However, despite the overlap the requirements are *not* the same. While improving your website’s functional accessibility is likely to benefit your SEO (and vice versa) it is still important to evaluate the two separately. Across the board, many functional accessibility issues were unlikely to have been introduced deliberately. Rather, they were likely a result of foundational failures within your default website template, inexperienced development support, or third-party plugins. ### Visual Accessibility URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/visual-accessibility/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:56:33.000Z The primary sense most websites are designed around is, almost exclusively, vision. Issues arise when it is assumed that every visitor sees in the same way—at full color, in full resolution, with full contrast—creating barriers for a significant share of active or potential users. --- ## What visual accessibility is Vision, and visual disabilities, are not binary. In reality, a wide spectrum of vision exists—including people with no vision, partial vision, differences in color perception, and age-related changes. The variations in vision are so common that most people with visual conditions don’t even identify as disabled, but they may still rely on tools or device settings to aid them. Ultimately, visual accessibility means ensuring that your website is able to be perceived by people no matter their vision. It’s important to be aware of the accessibility aids that people employ to correct their vision which may include corrective glasses or contact lenses, page magnification, and screen readers. --- ## Who is affected by visual accessibility Designing for visual accessibility benefits *anyone* whose vision is not perfect under ideal conditions—which will apply to most people at some point in their life. The [CDC reports](https://www.cdc.gov/vision-health/data-research/vision-loss-facts/index.html?ref=accelerateux.com) that 4.2 million United States adults aged 40 or over have uncorrectable vision impairment, an amount expected to double by 2050. ### Blindness As [defined by the Cleveland Clinic](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24446-blindness?ref=accelerateux.com), blindness is the inability to see or a lack of vision. While cases of complete blindness—the inability to see or detect any light—are very rare, approximately 1 million people within the US are considered legally blind. These individuals often rely on [screen readers](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/assistive-technology#screen-readers) as a way to access and interact with websites. For these users, a website’s visual design (or user interface) is mostly irrelevant—their experience is centered around the underlying content structure and whether the website code is structured to convey critical context to the screen reader. Common accessibility barriers for screen reader users include: - Images with no alt text. - Unlabeled buttons. - Illogical reading order. - Inaccessible PDFs. ### Low vision Low vision, or partial vision, refers to any other loss of vision that cannot be fully corrected. Low vision is extremely common and accounts for the largest segment of visual disabilities. It is not uncommon for individuals with low vision to rely on [assistive technology](https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/assistive-technology/) depending on their individual needs and level of visual acuity—these tools may include screen magnification, increased text size, and high contrast modes. Common accessibility barriers for low vision users include: - Small text that does not resize based on browser settings. - Layouts that can’t be zoomed, or that break the layout. - Low contrast between text and background colors. ### Color blindness An incredibly common condition, color blindness affects roughly [1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women](https://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/?ref=accelerateux.com). While color blindness can present in a number of ways, it most commonly affect a person’s ability to distinguish reds and greens. Common accessibility barriers for users with color blindness include: - Red error and green success messages that are only signified via color. - Charts that use color as the only way to separate or distinguish data. ### Age related vision changes Vision rarely stays consistent throughout a person’s life. In addition to generally worsening low vision, age introduces additional visual conditions that accessibility can improve—contrast sensitivities, focus, and color differentiation can all decline with age. Aging users often struggle with low contrast, small text, and cluttered layouts. The same considerations that assist users with blindness, low vision, and color blindness will also benefit aging users. ### Light sensitivity and visual processing conditions Some users have conditions that make them susceptible too, or have symptoms triggered by, factors like high brightness, flashing content, or certain color combinations. Conditions like migraines, photophobia, and other neurological conditions can affect these user’s ability to process and tolerate visual content. In these cases, common barriers to accessibility include: - Auto-playing video - Flashing animations - High-contrast, visually aggressive, color combinations --- ## Common accessibility issues ### 1\. Poor color contrast Color contrast issues have one of the highest failure rates on small business websites—but are also one of the easiest areas to resolve. To a certain extent low contrast can negatively affect all users, but it is especially impactful for older adults, and users with low vision or color blindness. Make sure to [check that the contrast](https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?ref=accelerateux.com) between text color (foreground) and background color is great enough to remain readable for users with mild to major visual disabilities. ### 2\. Missing alt-text Alt-text is the written description of an image within a website—required for both SEO and accessibility purposes. Ignoring alt-text creates an information gap for screen reader users; any visual asset or meaningful image becomes meaningless. ### 3\. Embedding text in images We see this often in things like promotional banners and some web graphics; making text a physical part of an image should be strongly avoided. Not only is it bad for your SEO, embedding text into images makes it impossible for browsers to resize or recolor it based on a user’s accessibility settings, and hides it from being read by screen readers. ### 4\. Fixed font sizes Many users have settings applied to their device or browser that automatically increase the size of text displayed on websites across the internet. When website developers define font styles in a way that prevent them from being increased by a browser it can prevent users from being able to read and interact with content. ### 5\. Non-responsive zoom When a user has magnification or increased font-size settings applied it’s important that the website adapts responsively without content overlapping or falling out of view. When a site does not respond correctly users are forced to scroll left or right to see information, and in instances where horizontal scrolling is disabled they may be blocked from using the website at all. --- ## Situational examples of visual accessibility While vision and age-related conditions are the constant and consistent ways users are impacted by visual accessibility, the benefits of supporting these capabilities improves user experience across the board. Many people, regardless of their level of vision can befit from the accessibility considerations. Some examples of situations that benefit from visual accessibility include the following: - Using devices in bright sunlight can create temporary contrast and visibility issues for any user. - Individuals with fully corrected vision may need to rely on device settings like magnification or contrast if their corrective lenses are lost or damaged. - Temporary eye conditions or procedures may impact an individuals ability to focus their vision or increase their contrast sensitivity. --- ## Why visual accessibility matters for small businesses Visual accessibility issues are some of the most straightforward problems to identify and address. They are also some of the most commonly identified and visible issues, and are most frequently cited in complaints and audits. If you have a dedicated website designer or developer they should be evaluating planned changes and guiding you on the best practices of visual accessibility. If you do not have a dedicated website designer or developer, these issues are typically the easiest ones to evaluate and fix yourself—regardless of technical capabilities or the website builder used. Many changes, such as color contrast and alt-text can be addressed directly within a website’s CMS. Understanding how these issues may affect your users will help you identify problems and prioritize remediation before they become a bigger issue. ### What is user experience, really? URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/user-experience/ux-overview/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T14:05:26.000Z In short, User Experience (UX) refers to how easy and enjoyable it is for someone to interact with, well, anything. While UX can be applied to all manner of products or experiences, when mentioned here it is specifically referring to the digital experiences of mobile apps and websites. --- ## No UX is a bad UX A lot of businesses make the mistake of assuming their UX is something that can wait until later. “We’ve decided we’re not ready to invest in UX” is something we’ve heard time and time again. But here’s the kicker, while investing in a *good* UX is technically optional, having a UX is not. Your website’s user experience exists from the day it goes live. It exists from the first user to land on your homepage and exists, good or bad, whether you’re “ready to invest” in it or not. By delaying any optimization or evaluation of your UX you’re allowing its problems to negatively impact your user’s experience—and that impact only compounds the longer it remains unaddressed. A negative UX may damage your user’s impression of your brand, their likelihood to convert or reengage, and their inclination to suggest your business or service to others. The more significant a role your website plays to the success of your business the more critical it is that you work to improve its UX. --- ## The impact of ignoring UX ### First impressions & brand credibility While it’s no surprise that first impressions matter, as many as [94% of users](https://dovetail.com/ux/ux-statistics/?ref=accelerateux.com) base their impression of a brand on its website, while [75% of users](https://ecommercebonsai.com/ux-statistics/?ref=accelerateux.com) report making judgements about a website’s credibility based solely on the design of the site. The first impression of your website sets a critical tone for the rest of a user’s experience. More critically, that impression is typically formed within the first [50 milliseconds](https://maze.co/blog/ux-statistics/?ref=accelerateux.com) that a user is on your website. ### Loss of customers It’s reported that as many as [88% of users will not return to a website](https://maze.co/blog/ux-statistics/?ref=accelerateux.com) after a frustrating experience such as a bad first impression, unresponsive page loads, or confusing navigation. In fact, [49% of consumers](https://maze.co/blog/ux-statistics/?ref=accelerateux.com) report having left a brand because of bad UX. ### Decrease in Revenue If you’re still not sure whether or not the cost of investing in improving user experience is worth it, it’s important to note that brands which prioritize UX optimization see a reported [42% improvement](https://maze.co/blog/ux-statistics/?ref=accelerateux.com) in customer retention, and up to [400% increases](https://www.forrester.com/blogs/09-10-15-leaving%5Fuser%5Fexperience%5Fto%5Fchance%5Fhurts%5Fcompanies/?ref=accelerateux.com) in conversion rates. It’s estimated that every $1 invested into UX can see a return of up to [$100 in revenue](https://www.mindinventory.com/blog/ui-ux-design-statistics/?ref=accelerateux.com) — that’s a 9,900% return on investment. ### Bad news travel faster It’s well known that people tend to be far more vocal about their negative opinions then they are about their positive ones. While 23% of users are likely to share a positive experience with 10 or more people, [13% of users](https://www.zippia.com/advice/user-experience-statistics/?ref=accelerateux.com) who have a negative experience will inform 15 or more people. That impact is real, and it can spread. --- ## Common mistakes businesses make There’s a lot of factors that go into ensuring your UX is as strong as can be, but some of the biggest issues we see businesses make include the following: - Investing in aesthetic-only sites that hide business contact information, or make it difficult to know how to purchase or signup for a service. - Having unclear navigation that frustrates users and causes them to leave the site early. - De-prioritizing mobile and winding up with experiences that are broken, hide or remove functionality, or feel unrelated to the desktop version. ### 5 Questions to ask when evaluating your own website If you don’t know where to start, here are 5 simple questions to ask yourself when looking at your website: 1. Can someone find your hours, prices, or contact info in under 30 seconds? 2. Is your checkout, signup, or inquiry process too long — or too intrusive? 3. Are your fonts readable? 4. Do your buttons look clickable? **Practical Tip:** Ask a friend or family member who wasn’t involved with setting up the website or business to try completing a task on it. Do they find what they were looking for with ease, or do they seem confused? #### Ready to dive deeper? Get our self-guided usability assessment and discover more areas for improvement. [Learn More ](https://accelerateux.gumroad.com/l/website-ux-assessment?ref=accelerateux.com) ## Recap: When to recognize your UX needs work If your making some of the following observations it’s probably a sign that your experience needs some support: - User retention issues like high bounce rates, low conversions, or complaints. - Dated or inconsistent branding - Mobile display issues Here at AccelerateUX our goal is to empower you to begin recognizing and correcting issues with your website or product yourself, but you may find that at a certain point it makes more sense to hire an expert. When looking for a designer or agency make sure they ask about your customers, their needs, and your goals as an organization instead of just your preferences for the website. ### The Importance of Digital Accessibility URL: https://www.accelerateux.com/resources/accessibility/accessibility-overview/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T19:51:52.000Z Every day people visit your website who navigate it differently than you. Some may not use a mouse, some may not be able to see the screen, some may need additional time to process the information within it. Digital accessibility is about ensuring your website is available and works for all of these users—and just like the accessibility of your physical business space (if you have one), it’s a legal requirement. The articles in this resource guide are designed to help you better understand what digital accessibility encompass, your responsibilities to provide it, and a process to begin evaluating and improving the accessibility of your website. --- ## What digital accessibility is Digital accessibility is the practice of designing and building websites that can be used by people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities. It is not a single fix or feature—accessibility is rooted in the quality of your website’s overall experience. > Accessibility is about whether or not someone can use your site at all, not just whether it looks good or loads quickly. ## Who digital accessibility affects While digital accessibility is meant to support those with visual, auditory, physical, and cognitive disabilities, the scope of who it impacts is broader than you might think. Some examples of user groups who are impacted by digital accessibility include: - **Older adults:** The population of aging internet users is growing, and with it increases the need for accessibility considerations like visual contrast and responsive page magnification. - **People with situational limitations:** A broad catchall, digital accessibility can support people dealing with temporary constraints such as: - A user with a broken arm may be unable to use their computer mouse and rely on their keyboard for navigation. - A user in a noise environment may rely on audio/video captions. - A user in bright sunlight may adjust the contrast settings of their display or browser to see the screen. Businesses often assume that they don’t need to worry about their website’s accessibility because they don’t think they have any disabled users. The reality is that digital accessibility tools are not able to identified and tracked in website analytics, making their use a significant and often under-estimated share of any current or potential users. --- ## Why digital accessibility matters for small businesses ### It hurts real customers The impacts of digital accessibility—both positive and negative—are often far less visible than the impacts of accessibility within a physical space, but they are just as real. In additional to leaving you open to a lawsuit, ignoring digital accessiblilty means you’re loosing out on a large group of potential users or customers. ### Disability rates within the united states | Population | Condition | Considerations | Source | | ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 13.9% | Adults that struggle with concentration, memory, or decision-making. | Cognitive accessibility impacts user's ability to process information and make decisison. | [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/disability-and-health/articles-documents/disability-impacts-all-of-us-infographic.html?ref=accelerateux.com) | | 15% | Adults that have some level of difficulty hearing. | Auditory accessibility impacts user's ability to understand and interact with audio-based media. It's important to ensure videos have caption and volume controls, and recorded content has readable transcript alternatives. | [NIH](https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/quick-statistics-hearing?ref=accelerateux.com) | | 4.2 Million | Adults over 40, with significant vision impairment. | One of the top 10 disabilities for adults, visual accessibility is one of the most impactful issues to address. Ensuring adequate font-size, color-contrast, and screen-reader support makes a major impact. | [CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/vision-health/data-research/vision-loss-facts/?CDC%5FAAref%5FVal=https://www.cdc.gov/visionhealth/basics/ced/fastfacts.htm&ref=accelerateux.com) | An inaccessible website turns customers away before you’re ever aware of them. Many to most users who encounter barriers on your website won’t reach out to report the issue—they’ll simply leave. ### It carries legal weight The US courts and Department of Justice (DOJ) have been shown to consistently apply Title III of the [Americans with Disabilities Act](https://www.ada.gov/?ref=accelerateux.com) (ADA) to websites, and it’s a myth that only larger organizations are held accountable for infractions—the size of an organization does not affect it’s ADA accountability, and smaller businesses are frequently the target of lawsuits related to accessibility issues within their website. #### Federal filings by business size | Year | Companies with annual revenue less than 25M | Companies with annual revenue greater than 25M | | ---- | ------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | | 2025 | 64% | 36% | | 2024 | 67% | 33% | | 2023 | 73% | 27% | Data is sourced from [UsableNet’s 2025 Year-End Digital Accessibility Lawsuit Report](https://info.usablenet.com/hubfs/Remediated%20-%202025%5FYear-End%5FDigital%5FAccessibility%5FLawsuit%5FReport%5FFINAL.pdf?ref=accelerateux.com). ### It reflects on your business Awareness around digital accessibility is increasing. As such, it’s impacting how customers evaluate whether a business is trustworthy and professional. An inaccessible website signals, intentionally or not, that some customers aren’t welcome at your business. Another important aspect is that many digital accessibility requirements align with [Search Engine Optimization](https://www.upwork.com/resources/seo-worth-it-small-business?ref=accelerateux.com) (SEO) guidelines. If you’ve optimized your website for SEO, you may have less accessibility issues. Conversely, if you ignore accessibility you may be negatively impacting your SEO—and reducing your business's reach even further. --- ## What digital accessibility is not There’s a lot of misunderstanding around what the legal requirements and practical implementation of digital accessibility actually looks like. As you begin to explore and invest in improving the accessibility of your website, remember that digital accessibility: - Is not isolated to large corporations or governments. Businesses of all size are expected to maintain accessible experiences. - Cannot be solved by a single tool, plugin, or one-time fix. - Is not optional for any businesses with a public-facing website. - Is not a single project with a clear finish line. Digital accessibility requires ongoing attention as your site grows and changes. ## How digital accessibility problems occur Most website accessibility failures are not intentional. They are a result of building or maintaining a site without understanding how different people will use it—but being unaware of your website’s accessibility issues does not protect your from legal accountability. Some common causes for digital accessibility failures stem from the following: - Using website templates that weren’t developed with accessibility in mind. - Relying on third-party tools, website plugins, or embedded functionality that introduces accessibility barriers. - Adding new content or features, without performing ongoing accessibility reviews. Don’t worry, most accessibility issues will be fixable without needing to completely rebuild or redesign a website. --- ## How to use this resource guide AccelerateUX was founded to bridge the gap between business owners and professional consultants by providing educational resources and practical advice for maintaining and improving websites. As such, each article in this resource is written for readers without a technical or accessibility background—no prior knowledge required. We have structured the articles in this resource to flow from broad overviews in *Getting Started*, to in-depth explanations of important topics in *Key Concepts*, to more step-by-step instruction and detailed guidance in *Best Practices*. Articles can be read in sequential order or you can jump to the topics you are most interested in. While accessibility guidelines can feel overwhelming they don’t have to be, and you don’t have to fix everything all at once. However, the longer you put off any accessibility work, the more work there will be—and the harder it will be to align your site to WCAG standards. Start soon, but start slow.