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Accessibility

Built to be usable.

Around one in six people live with a significant disability. Every site I build is made to work for them. Not with a plugin bolted on at the end, but in how the thing is built.

What that means in practice

Every site I hand over is built and tested against WCAG 2.1 level AA. In plain terms:

If you use a screen reader

  • Pages use real headings in a logical order, so you can jump between sections
  • Landmarks (header, navigation, main, footer), so you can skip straight to the content
  • A skip link as the first thing you reach on every page
  • Every image has alt text that describes what it actually shows
  • Every form field has a real label, and errors are announced, not just coloured red
  • Buttons and links say where they go, not "click here"

If you have low vision

  • Text and background colours are contrast-tested, not eyeballed, and everything meets or beats 4.5:1
  • Body text never drops below 16px, and everything is sized in relative units so it scales when you raise your browser's font size
  • Pages stay usable at 200% zoom without horizontal scrolling
  • Colour is never the only way information is conveyed. Links stay underlined, errors carry text
  • If your system asks for higher contrast, the site responds by darkening accents and strengthening borders

If you don't use a mouse

  • Everything works by keyboard alone, in a sensible order
  • A clear, high-contrast outline always shows where you are, and it's never hidden
  • No keyboard traps, no menus that can only be opened by hovering
  • Every target is at least 44 by 44 pixels

If motion causes you problems

  • If your system is set to reduce motion, animation and smooth scrolling switch off automatically
  • Nothing flashes, auto-plays, or moves without you asking it to

Why there's no accessibility widget on this site

You may have seen sites with a little accessibility button in the corner promising instant compliance. I don't use them, and I won't install one for a client.

They don't work. An overlay script can't fix the underlying HTML. It can't add meaning to a heading structure that isn't there, or write alt text that describes a photo it can't see. Worse, they frequently interfere with the screen readers and browser settings people already have configured properly.

The evidence has caught up with them. In the first half of 2025, 22.6% of US web accessibility lawsuits were filed against sites that had an overlay installed, and in April 2025 the FTC fined one of the largest providers $1 million for misrepresenting what its tool could do. The National Federation of the Blind has publicly opposed them.

Doing it properly takes longer. It's also the only thing that actually helps.

Found something that doesn't work?

Tell me. I'd genuinely rather know, and I'll fix it, on this site and on any site I've built.

Email tee@websitesbyscarlet.co.zw with the page and what went wrong. You don't need to know the technical term for it; "the menu won't open with my keyboard" is a perfect bug report.

I aim to reply within 24 hours on weekdays.

Need an accessible site?

It's how I build by default, not an extra line on the invoice.

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