ADA website compliance checklist for small businesses

There's no official government checklist or certificate for ADA website compliance — the law points to WCAG as the practical technical standard. Below are the issues that show up most often in real audits and legal demand letters — fixing these covers the majority of what typically gets flagged.

• Every image has meaningful alt text

  Screen readers announce alt text in place of images. Missing alt text is the single most common issue found across the web.

• Text has enough contrast against its background

  Light gray text on white backgrounds is unreadable for many users with low vision, not just a stylistic choice.

• Every form field has a visible, linked label

  Placeholder text alone isn't a label — it disappears once you start typing and isn't reliably read by assistive tech.

• The whole site is usable with a keyboard alone

  Some users can't use a mouse. If you can't Tab through your entire site and use every button, neither can they.

• Links describe where they go

  "Click here" and "read more" are meaningless out of context to someone navigating by a list of links.

• Videos have captions

  Required for deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors, and helps anyone watching without sound.

• Page structure uses real headings (H1, H2, H3)

  Screen reader users often navigate by jumping between headings — styled-to-look-like-a-heading text doesn't work for them.

Checking this by hand is slow

Going through a whole site manually against a list like this takes hours, and it's easy to miss things — especially contrast ratios, which need to be measured, not eyeballed. An automated scan checks all of the above (and more) in under a minute.

Run a free scan of your site to see exactly which of these apply to you, with the specific elements flagged.