Most companies would never build a storefront with no way in. They do it online constantly, and almost never on purpose. The ADA was never only about ramps and parking spaces, and the surge in web accessibility complaints is what happens when a whole industry misses that.
WCAG organizes everything it asks for under four words: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust. POUR. Learn those four and the rest of the guidelines stop looking like an alphabet soup of success criteria.
1. Perceivable
Can everyone actually take in the content, whichever senses they are using?
- Every meaningful image has alt text that says what the image communicates, not image1.jpg and not a keyword list. Decorative images get an empty alt so screen readers skip them.
- Video has captions. Audio has a transcript.
- Text clears contrast: 4.5:1 for body copy, 3:1 for large text and meaningful graphics.
- Color is never the only thing carrying meaning. “The red fields are required” fails for a colorblind reader.
2. Operable
Can everyone drive the interface, with whatever they have got?
- Everything works by keyboard alone. Tab reaches it, Enter or Space activates it, nothing traps focus.
- Focus is visible. If you cannot see where you are, you cannot use the page.
- There is a skip link so a screen reader user is not walked through the whole navigation on every page.
- No content flashes, and anything auto-playing or moving can be paused.
- Touch targets are big enough to hit, 44 by 44 pixels or better on mobile.
3. Understandable
Does the site behave the way a reasonable person expects?
- Navigation sits in the same place, in the same order, on every page.
- Every form field has a real
<label>tied to its input. Placeholder text is not a label; it disappears the moment someone starts typing. - Error messages identify the field and say what to do, not just “invalid entry.”
- The page language is declared, and headings actually describe the section they head.
4. Robust
Will it still work with the assistive technology someone is using, including whatever ships next year?
- Valid, semantic HTML. A real
<button>, not a<div>wearing a click handler. - One
<h1>per page and a heading order that does not skip levels. - Landmarks:
<nav>,<main>,<footer>, so a screen reader can jump straight to the content. - ARIA used only where plain HTML cannot do the job. Wrong ARIA is worse than none.
Why we test with a person, not just a scanner
Automated tools catch about a third of real failures, the mechanical third. They cannot tell you that your alt text is technically present and completely useless, or that the tab order sends someone through the footer before the contact form. Tyler, my legally blind assistant, runs the final JAWS pass on every Web Chick project. That is the difference between a site that scores well and a site that works.
How to audit your own site
- Run a free scanner such as WAVE on your five most important pages and fix what it flags.
- Put the mouse away. Tab through a whole page. If you cannot reach or complete something, neither can a visitor.
- Turn on a screen reader, VoiceOver on Mac and iPhone, Narrator on Windows, and listen to your home page and your contact form.
- Check your PDFs. They are the most common failure point on government and agency sites, and tagging usually does not save them.
- Write down what you found, what you fixed and when. Documentation matters if a demand letter ever shows up.
Why this pays for itself
Set the legal exposure aside for a second. An accessible site is a better site for everybody: cleaner structure, faster loads, real headings, described images, working keyboard support. Search engines read the same signals assistive technology does. Every accessibility fix we make tends to show up as a ranking and conversion improvement too.
And there is the part that is not a business case at all. Somebody is trying to use your website right now with a screen reader. Whether they can is a choice somebody made in the code. That was always the point of the law.
Originally published on Daily Queue in October 2023. Rewritten and expanded for WebChick.com in July 2026 with the current DOJ Title II deadlines, WCAG 2.2 references and an expanded FAQ.
