How to improve website accessibility in WordPress

Start with the home page, navigation, contact or enquiry form, key landing pages, checkout if applicable, and any page receiving traffic from search. Check them with the W3C Easy Checks: keyboard access, visible focus, headings, alternative text, form labels, captions and colour contrast. These checks are a first review, not proof of compliance.

Write down each issue and its URL. Fix repeated problems in the theme or page builder rather than correcting the same mistake page by page.

Use the WordPress heading levels to create a logical outline. Keep one clear page heading, then use lower levels for sections instead of choosing a heading only because it looks large. Write link text that explains the destination, and add alternative text that conveys an image’s purpose. Mark decorative images as decorative rather than describing them unnecessarily.

For videos, provide captions and, where needed, a transcript. Do not put essential instructions only in an image, colour, hover state or autoplaying animation.

Use a current theme with documented accessibility support, but inspect its menus, search, sliders, accordions, pop-ups and buttons yourself. Every control must work with a keyboard, have a visible focus state and open or close without trapping focus. A theme that looks clean can still fail when a menu or modal is operated with the Tab, Enter or Escape keys.

If you find a theme-level defect, update the theme, replace the component or ask its developer for a fix. Avoid hiding the problem with custom CSS that removes focus outlines.

Give every form field a clear, programmatic label, identify required fields in text, explain errors beside the affected field and make the error message understandable without relying on colour. Check that menus, search, cookie controls and third-party forms can all be completed from the keyboard.

Keep navigation in a meaningful order and provide a way to bypass repeated blocks, such as a skip link. The common Friday failure is a pop-up or consent banner that takes focus and leaves keyboard users unable to reach the page or close the banner.

Use Tab and Shift+Tab to move through each important page. Confirm that focus is always visible, the order makes sense, menus and dialogs have usable keyboard controls, and nothing is unreachable or trapped. Zoom the page and check that text remains readable without horizontal scrolling where the layout should reflow.

Then test with a screen reader if you can, and ask disabled users to review important journeys. Automated scanners are useful for finding missing labels, contrast issues and structural errors, but they do not replace manual or user testing.

The manual route is genuinely fine for many sites, especially when you control the theme and content. It takes longer, but it fixes the causes of problems. Accessibility overlays and toolbars should not be treated as a compliance certificate or a substitute for semantic content, accessible forms and keyboard-friendly components; specialist accessibility guidance specifically warns that overlays are not the solution.

For the fast route, install and activate One Accessibility Pro, choose a suitable preset, and review the result on desktop and mobile. Its controls can provide visitor adjustments for contrast, text size, cursors, filters and tooltips. Keep the underlying fixes and test the toolbar itself, because a broken floating control, modal or third-party script can create new keyboard and screen-reader problems.