Your Website Is Turning Away Customers (And You Don't Even Know It)

Imagine you own a coffee shop. You've spent real money on the interior, the signage, the menu boards. But then someone points out that your front door has a step — no ramp — and the menu font is so small and low-contrast that anyone squinting in sunlight can't read it.

You weren't trying to turn people away. You just didn't think about it.

That's exactly what's happening on most small business websites right now.

What "Accessibility" Actually Means

Web accessibility means your website works for everyone — including people who experience the world a little differently.

That might be someone who is blind and uses a screen reader (software that reads the page out loud). It might be someone with shaky hands who can't use a mouse and navigates with a keyboard instead. Or someone who's colourblind and can't tell your red "Buy Now" button from the grey background behind it.

But here's what surprises most people: it also includes a huge chunk of your perfectly "average" customers.

More People Than You Think

Around 15–20% of the global population lives with some form of disability. That's not a niche. That's roughly 1 in 6 people.

And that number doesn't account for situational limitations — which affect all of us. Think about reading your phone in bright sunlight (low contrast suddenly matters). Or browsing one-handed while holding a bag of groceries. Or watching a video at work with the sound off (captions become essential).

Accessible design solves for those edge cases too. It's not charity work — it's just good product thinking.

The Business Case Is Simple

Let's say you run a boutique hotel in a popular tourist area. A traveller with low vision tries to book a room on your website. The text is tiny, the booking form is impossible to navigate without a mouse, and there are no labels on the input fields — so their screen reader just reads "field, field, field."

They give up. They book the place down the road that happens to have a cleaner, simpler site.

You never knew they visited. You never knew you lost them. That's the quiet cost of an inaccessible website.

Now flip it. If your site is clean, readable, and easy to use with just a keyboard — that same traveller books with you. They tell their community. Disability communities, by the way, are fiercely loyal to businesses that treat them like full human beings.

The Things That Actually Make a Difference

You don't need to rebuild your entire website to get the basics right. Here's what matters most:

Colour contrast. There should be a clear difference between your text colour and the background behind it. Light grey text on a white background is a nightmare for anyone with vision difficulties — and surprisingly hard to read for everyone else too.

Text size and spacing. Small text isn't elegant. It's just hard to read. Generous spacing between lines and sections makes a site feel calm and easy to scan.

Keyboard navigation. Every button, form, and menu on your site should work if someone is pressing Tab on their keyboard instead of clicking a mouse. Most sites fail this basic test.

Image descriptions (alt text). When you add a photo to your website, you can also add a short text description of what's in it. Screen readers use this to describe images to blind users. It takes ten seconds per image and makes a world of difference.

Captions on videos. If you use video to showcase your work or explain your services, captions let people follow along without sound — whether they're deaf, in a noisy café, or just forgot their headphones.

None of these are exotic. They're the digital equivalent of a ramp at your front door and a menu with a readable font.

One More Thing Worth Knowing

In many countries — including Norway, the EU, and the US — there are legal requirements around website accessibility for businesses. The rules are tightening every year.

I'm not raising this to scare you. I'm raising it because "do it to stay competitive" and "do it to stay compliant" are pointing in the same direction. You might as well get ahead of it.

The good news: if you're building a new website or refreshing an existing one, accessibility doesn't have to cost extra. It just has to be considered from the start. Retrofitting it later — when someone complains or a regulator comes knocking — costs far more.

The Bottom Line

An accessible website isn't a nice-to-have for people who care about doing the right thing. It's a wider front door. More people can walk through it, have a good experience, and become customers.

The businesses that figure this out now will quietly outperform the ones who don't — not because of some grand strategy, but because they simply didn't turn people away.

If you'd like a second opinion on your project, I'm easy to reach — get in touch here.