Website Accessibility Basics: Making Your Site Usable for Everyone

A customer in Lagos opens your website on a phone, in bright sunlight, with a cracked screen. Another visitor uses a screen reader because they cannot see the page at all. A third has a broken wrist and cannot use a mouse this week. All three want the same thing: to understand what you offer and contact you.

Website accessibility is building a site all of them can use. It is good design, done properly, and many basics cost nothing extra when built in from the start. They also improve the experience for every visitor, including people on slow connections and small phones.

This guide covers the practical basics for Nigerian business websites. Work through the checks below, fix the biggest gaps first, and your site will be usable by far more people.

Who accessibility actually helps

Accessibility covers a wide range of situations: people with low vision who need larger text or stronger contrast, people who are blind and use screen readers, people who cannot use a mouse and navigate only with a keyboard, and people who are deaf or hard of hearing and need captions on videos. It also helps people with temporary injuries, such as a broken arm, and people in difficult conditions, such as bright sun, a noisy market, or a slow network.

When you design for these situations, you also help the customer browsing one-handed on a bus in traffic, the older customer who finds small grey text hard to read, and the visitor whose phone screen is dim to save battery. Accessibility and usability are the same work, seen from different angles.

1. Make text readable

Text is the heart of most business websites, so start here. If people cannot read your words, nothing else matters.

Use a font size that is comfortable on a phone, so a visitor does not need to pinch and zoom to read a paragraph. Headings should be clearly larger than body text, so the structure of the page is obvious at a glance.

Contrast matters just as much as size. Light grey text on a white background may look elegant in a design mockup, but it is hard to read in sunlight and painful for people with low vision. Dark text on a light background, or light text on a dark background, is the safe choice.

Keep paragraphs short and sentences plain. Long blocks of text are hard for everyone, and especially hard for visitors using screen readers or translation tools. Break information into short paragraphs, use headings to divide sections, and use lists for steps and features. Clear writing is an accessibility feature.

2. Give images a text alternative

Every meaningful image should have a short text description, known as alt text. A screen reader reads this description aloud, so a visitor who cannot see the image still understands what it shows.

Good alt text describes the purpose of the image, not every detail. For a photo of your restaurant's dining room, "Bright dining room with tables set for dinner" is enough. For a product photo, name the product and its key feature, such as "Black leather handbag with gold clasp." For a button image, describe the action, such as "Book an appointment."

Alt text also helps when images fail to load on a slow connection: the description shows instead, so the visitor still gets the message. Choosing genuine photos over borrowed ones matters here too; read our guide on real photos versus stock photos for your business website for the trade-offs.

3. Make the site work without a mouse

Many visitors never touch a mouse. They use a keyboard, moving from link to link with the Tab key, or a phone screen reader with gestures. Your site should work fully that way.

Test it yourself. Open your website, put your mouse aside, and press Tab repeatedly. You should be able to reach every menu item, button, form field, and link, in a sensible order, and always see which element is selected, usually as a visible outline. If the focus disappears, or you get trapped in a menu you cannot escape, keyboard users cannot use your site.

A menu that only opens on mouse hover will not work well on a touch screen either, so keyboard-friendly menus usually work better on phones too.

4. Use headings and labels properly

A screen reader user often jumps from heading to heading to find the section they need, much like skimming a document by its bold titles. If your page has no real headings, or every heading looks the same size, that navigation breaks down.

Use one main heading for the page title, then subheadings for each section, in order. Do not make text look like a heading by simply making it bold and large; use the actual heading structure in your website editor or code. The visual result looks the same, but the underlying structure is what assistive tools rely on.

Forms need the same care. Every field should have a clear, permanent label, such as "Your name" or "Phone number," attached to the field itself, not just placeholder text that disappears when someone starts typing. Placeholder text alone is a common mistake: once a visitor types, the instruction vanishes, and a screen reader may never announce it. Clear labels help every visitor fill in a form correctly the first time.

5. Do not rely on colour alone, and caption your videos

Colour should never be the only way information is communicated. A form that marks an error only by turning a field red tells a visitor who cannot distinguish red from green nothing at all. Pair colour with words or symbols: write "Error: please enter a valid phone number" next to the field. For links inside a paragraph, underline them as well as colouring them, so they are recognisable without colour vision.

If your site includes videos, such as a tour of your hotel or a product demonstration, add captions. Captions help visitors who are deaf or hard of hearing, and they also help everyone watching with the sound off in public places. If you publish audio, provide a written summary of the main points. Keep autoplay off, or give visitors an obvious way to pause and mute, because unexpected sound can make a page impossible for a screen reader user.

Finally, keep navigation simple: a short, consistent menu, contact information where people expect it, and pop-ups that can be closed with a keyboard. Keeping pages light and fast is part of accessibility too, especially on slow connections.

A quick accessibility checklist

Run through this list on your own website, on a phone and on a computer:

• Can you read all the text comfortably without zooming, even in bright light?
• Does every meaningful image have a short, useful description?
• Can you reach every link, button, and form field using only the Tab key?
• Are headings used in order, and is every form field clearly labelled?
• Is information ever shown by colour alone, without words or symbols?
• Do videos have captions, and can audio be paused easily?
• Is the navigation simple, and is contact information easy to find?

If you answer no to any of these, you have a clear next fix. Start with text size and contrast, then keyboard navigation, then image descriptions. Those three alone make a large difference.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does accessibility mean my website will look plain?

No. Accessible websites can look modern and attractive. The rules are about structure, contrast, and interaction, not about removing design. Many of the best-looking websites follow these basics, because clear design and accessible design overlap heavily.

Do I need to rebuild my website to make it accessible?

Usually not. Most fixes are small changes: larger text, stronger contrast, alt text on images, proper labels on forms, and keyboard-friendly menus. A full rebuild is only needed if the site is very old or built on a broken foundation, which your developer can assess.

Is accessibility only for large companies?

No. Every visitor lost to a confusing or unreadable page is a lost enquiry, and a salon, school, or restaurant that is easy to use online stands out precisely because so many competitors have not fixed these basics yet.

Make your website work for every visitor

Accessibility is not a separate project to add at the end. It is a way of building a website that respects every visitor's time and needs. The businesses that get this right do not just avoid excluding people; they earn trust, because a site that is easy to use feels professional and considerate.

If your website needs an accessibility review, or you are planning a new site and want these basics built in from the start, Explore our services to see how Joetech designs websites around real visitors, or contact us to talk about making your site usable for everyone.