Minimum Accessibility for a Business Website

I often send clients the Lighthouse Accessibility score next to Performance and SEO. That number is not a full WCAG audit. It catches mistakes that also bother a parent on a phone, a staff member using a keyboard, and a visitor who enlarges text.

This is the minimum I clear before handing over a business website.

Contrast and text

• small text on top of photos still has to be readable; do not put essential sentences only inside an image;
• a placeholder is not a label;
• the base font is large enough on mobile without pinching to zoom.

If a CTA is visible only because the color looked “nice” on the designer’s screen, check it again outdoors.

Forms and names that stay clear

• every input has a label that stays visible;
• error messages say what to fix;
• buttons say the job (“Send question”), not only “Submit”;
• “click here” links are replaced with a sentence that still makes sense on its own.

The inquiry form is the money path. A confusing form costs more than the time to fix its labels.

Page structure

• one H1 that matches the page title;
• headings do not jump from H2 to H4 just to enlarge the font;
• meaningful images have alt text that describes the content, decorative images may use an empty alt;
• heading order matches the order visitors see.

Keyboard and thumb

• Tab moves through the menu, the form, and the CTA without a trap;
• focus is visible and not removed in CSS;
• button and menu hit areas are loose enough on a narrow screen;
• the mobile menu can be closed again, not only opened.

I test with Tab on a desktop and a thumb on a phone, not only with the automated report.

What I do not promise in a small scope

A full screen-reader audit, video captions, and a legal accessibility statement are separate work. For a company, school, or local service site, the list above removes most of the Lighthouse findings that are embarrassing on day one.