Introduction to Creating Accessible Web Content

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Introduction to Creating Accessible Web Content

Posted March 13, 2025

AudioEye

Posted March 13, 2025

Website open with accessibility icons on top that represent closed captions, alt text, keyboard navigation, animation, and color contrast.
Website open with accessibility icons on top that represent closed captions, alt text, keyboard navigation, animation, and color contrast.

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Getting started with digital accessibility can feel overwhelming, especially considering the evolving regulations and requirements. Below, you’ll learn how to create accessible web content that works for all users, particularly those with disabilities.

Originally Posted on October 3, 2016

If you’re new to digital accessibility, the path to making content accessible and usable for people with disabilities can feel overwhelming. With evolving guidelines, technical jargon, and legal requirements to follow, knowing where to get started can feel tricky. 

Here’s the good news: Accessibility doesn’t have to be complicated. There are simple improvements you can make that significantly enhance the accessibility of your digital content. From adding captions to videos and ensuring your links make sense to adding alt text to images and improving the readability of your text, small, intentional steps quickly add up. 

Below, we’ll break down the fundamentals of accessible web applications and digital content and provide clear steps to help you get started. 

Before we dive in, a quick history of how digital accessibility got to where it is today.

From the Terminal to the Window — A Brief History of Digital Accessibility

Making digital content accessible has always been a challenge that evolves alongside technology. 

In the early days of computing, text-based systems like DOS made accessibility straightforward — assistive technologies could easily interpret on-screen text. But when graphical user interfaces (GUIs) like Windows, accessibility became more challenging. Information was no longer just text; it was visual elements like buttons and menus, making it more difficult for assistive technologies to interpret content. 

By the 1990s, as interfaces grew more complex, assistive technologies struggled to keep up. The solution? Accessibility APIs — introduced around the early 2000s — allowed operating systems to provide standardized information about on-screen elements, making assistive tools more effective.

However, the web’s evolution brought new hurdles. Early static websites were relatively accessible, but dynamic, JavaScript-driven content disrupted traditional assistive technology methods. To address this, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) introduced the Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) in 2014, a framework allowing developers to define how web elements should be interpreted by assistive technologies. 

With the introduction of WAI-ARIA, today’s developers have more flexibility in creating more accessible web content and applications. But it’s not a perfect solution, which is where accessibility standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) come into play. 

Digital Accessibility: What it Looks Like Today

At its core, digital accessibility ensures web pages, apps, online tools, and other digital content are accessible and usable by everyone, particularly those with disabilities. Just as a wheelchair ramp makes a building more accessible, digital accessibility removes barriers that prevent people from navigating and interacting with online content. 

By removing barriers to online content, individuals with auditory, cognitive, physical, motor, speech, and visual disabilities or impairments are better able to access and use digital content, a civil right in today’s highly digital world. Accessibility also benefits those with situational disabilities, such as trying to read your phone in bright sunlight, needing captions to watch a video in a sound-sensitive environment, or using voice commands while driving.

Beyond inclusivity, digital accessibility is also a legal requirement. Regulations like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the European Accessibility Act (EAA), and Section 508 mandate that digital content must be accessible and conform to the accessibility standards outlined in WCAG 2.1 Level AA. 


WCAG is built on four key principles — content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (POUR) to accommodate users with disabilities. The guidelines also evaluate websites and digital content based on three conformance levels: Level A (basic), Level AA (the internationally accepted standard for accessibility), and Level AAA (most strict).

A checklist with an accessibility icon.

Creating Accessible Web Content: Your Checklist for Getting Started

Now that you understand the history and importance of making your digital content accessible, let’s dive into how to do so. As we mentioned above, meeting the more than 70 success criterion included in WCAG 2.1 Level AA can seem overwhelming. However, making small and simple changes in your web development process can have a big impact on the accessibility of your content. 

The checklist below isn’t an exhaustive list — it’s a starting point. These are simple, effective ways to enhance accessibility, bring you closer to compliance with accessibility standards, and improve the user experience for everyone.

  • Add alt text to images: Every image should have descriptive alt text (or alternative text) so assistive technology and screen reader users can convey its purpose to users who are blind or have low vision.
  • Use headers properly: Headings should follow a hierarchical order (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to create a clear content structure. This makes content easier for screen readers and users to navigate. 
  • Include captions for multimedia: Videos should have accurate captions, and audio content should have transcripts to ensure users who are deaf or hard of hearing can interact with the video. 
  • Ensure good color contrast: Text should be easy to read against background elements. WCAG recommends a minimum color contrast of 4.5:1 for normal text and 7:1 for normal text. 
  • Allow text resizing: Users should be able to increase text size by at least 200% without breaking the layout or functionality. 
  • Enable keyboard navigation: Ensure all interactive elements (buttons, forms, menus, multimedia content, etc.) can be navigated and interacted with keyboard shortcuts and commands alone (no mouse). 
  • Control moving content: Provide users with options to pause, stop, or hide auto-playing videos, blinking text, scrolling elements, or animations. 
  • Avoid flashing content: Anything that flashes more than three times per second can trigger seizures. If flashes are unavoidable, give users the option to pause flashes. 
  • Write in plain language: Keep text clear, concise, and free of unnecessary jargon to improve readability for all users, including those with cognitive disabilities like dyslexia. 
  • Use descriptive links: Use meaningful link text for all hyperlinks. Rather than “click here”, use more descriptive text like “Download the accessibility guide” to help users understand the link’s purpose. 
  • Use semantic HTML and WAI-ARIA when needed: Proper HTML tags like (<button> instead of <div>) help assistive technologies interpret content correctly. WAI-ARIA can provide extra accessibility where HTML elements alone fall short.
  • Keep navigation consistent: All navigation elements, including menus, links, and buttons, should be in the same place on every page to create a more consistent and predictable experience for users. 
  • Provide clear error messages: If a form submission fails, users should know exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.
  • Make online documents accessible: Accessibility requirements also extend to online documents, including PowerPoint presentations, Microsoft Word documents, Excel sheets, PDFs, and other web-delivered documents. Each should follow the same best practices: use proper headings, readable text, sufficient color contrast, alt text for images, etc.


These WCAG success criterion are a great starting point for improving the accessibility and compliance of your digital content. When you’re ready to enhance accessibility further, check out our comprehensive WCAG 2.1 checklist.

How Accessibility Tools Can Help You Create More Accessible Content

You might be wondering how to tell which (if any) of your digital content has the accessibility features mentioned above. That’s where accessibility testing tools come into play. There are multiple tools designed to help you find and fix accessibility issues in your existing content, including:

  • Free accessibility tools: Free accessibility checkers like WAVE, Google Lighthouse, and AudioEye’s Web Accessibility Scanner provide quick accessibility scans, flagging common issues like missing alt text or poor color contrast. These tools are a great starting point for improving the accessibility of your content; however, they won’t catch everything.
  • Automated testing tools: These tools scan your entire website for accessibility problems and are usually part of a larger accessibility platform. For example, AudioEye’s Automated Accessibility Platform includes Automated Fixes that detect and fix common accessibility issues, streamlining your path to accessibility. However, automated tools alone can’t fix all accessibility issues. They can’t replace human judgment and expertise — especially when it comes to things like logical content structure or meaningful alt text. 
  • Accessibility overlays and widgets: Accessibility overlays and widgets are marketed as a ‘quick fix’ for accessibility, promising to enhance accessibility by adding accessibility features like text resizing or screen reader compatibility with a single line of code. The reality: accessibility overlays and widgets rarely address compliance issues and can interfere with assistive technologies. Relying on these tools alone is not enough to make accessible websites.
  • Expert audits or manual reviews: Since automated tools can only identify some accessibility issues, accessibility experts can manually review content, conduct user testing, and provide detailed recommendations for resolving more complex accessibility issues. For example, AudioEye’s Expert Audits are conducted by accessibility experts and individuals from the disability community to identify issues that put your organization at legal risk.
  • Accessibility training: Finally, there’s accessibility training. This is the best long-term strategy for ongoing accessibility and compliance as it empowers your team with much-needed accessibility knowledge. AudioEyeQ, for instance, provides content creators, developers, designers, and leadership with comprehensive accessibility training, helping them build accessibility into their workflows from the start.

It’s important to remember that no single tool guarantees full compliance with accessibility laws. Automated tools can catch common accessibility issues, but they can’t determine if your content is easy to navigate or understand. Expert audits do provide the most thorough insights, but they can be time-consuming. Taking a hybrid approach to accessibility testing with both automated and manual testing can help you create content that’s not technically accessible and compliant, but truly usable for all users.

A dashboard view of a website design's hex codes, color contrast ration, and text size

From Basics to Compliance — Get Started with AudioEye

Here’s the bottom line: Creating accessible digital content that is usable and compliant doesn’t have to be complicated. The checklist above will have a significant impact on the accessibility and usability of your content. But true accessibility goes beyond quick fixes. It requires an ongoing commitment and, most importantly, the right tools.

That’s where AudioEye comes in. AudioEye takes a three-pronged approach to accessibility, combining AI-driven automation technology, audits with experts from the disability community, and testing throughout the development process to achieve industry-leading compliance with accessibility standards. With our approach, you’ll save a significant amount of time and up to 90% in costs compared to traditional fix-at-source approaches. Plus, with AudioEye Assurance, you’ll enjoy a level of protection that is 400% more effective than consulting or automation-only approaches. 

Ready to start your path to accessible content? Use AudioEye’s free Web Accessibility Scanner to test your content for 30 WCAG violations (more than any tool on the market) and start making improvements today. 

Want to go even further? Schedule a demo to learn how AudioEy can help you create truly accessible and compliant digital content — without the guesswork.

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