Accessible websites are easier for more people to understand, navigate, and use. They also tend to have clearer structure, stronger content, more usable forms, and fewer frustrating dead ends. For a Canadian business, that makes accessibility both a people-first responsibility and a practical quality standard for the website.
This website accessibility checklist is designed for a first working review. It is not a certification, a complete WCAG audit, or legal advice. Accessibility requirements can depend on your organization, sector, province, territory, and audience. Use the checklist to find obvious barriers, plan fixes, and decide when a specialist review is warranted.
Start with the four accessibility principles
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines organize accessibility around four principles: content should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Those principles are more useful than treating accessibility as a list of isolated technical tasks.
- Perceivable: People can access the information in more than one way. Images have alternatives, video has captions, and text remains readable.
- Operable: Visitors can use the interface with a keyboard and are not blocked by timing, motion, or difficult controls.
- Understandable: Navigation, instructions, labels, and error messages are clear and predictable.
- Robust: The site works reliably with browsers and assistive technologies as they evolve.
Review your most important visitor journeys through all four lenses. A homepage can look polished while a keyboard user cannot open its menu, a screen reader user cannot understand its form, or a low-vision visitor cannot read its text.
Test every key action with a keyboard
Put the mouse aside and use the Tab, Shift+Tab, Enter, Space, and arrow keys. Start at the top of the page and move through every interactive element.
Confirm that:
- the focus indicator is always visible;
- focus moves in a logical order that matches the visual layout;
- menus, accordions, dialogs, carousels, and forms can be operated without a mouse;
- no component traps focus;
- a visitor can close an overlay and return to the control that opened it;
- skip navigation or another efficient route helps users bypass repeated page chrome; and
- important actions do not require hover, dragging, or a precise pointer.
A visible focus style is not a design flaw. It is the keyboard equivalent of a cursor. If your team is planning a small business website redesign, define focus states alongside hover and active states so they are treated as part of the system.
Check headings, landmarks, and link purpose
Pages need a meaningful structure, not just large text that looks like a heading. Use one clear page title, then nest sections in a logical hierarchy. Do not choose heading levels only for their default size.
Use semantic landmarks for the header, navigation, main content, complementary content, and footer. Keep repeated navigation in a consistent order. Link text should make sense in context; phrases such as “read more” are less useful when a screen reader presents links as a list.
Check that page titles identify the page, the current navigation state is clear, and breadcrumb trails reflect the actual hierarchy. These improvements also make content easier for everyone to scan and support the conversion principles discussed in our guide to UI/UX design and conversion rates.
Review text, contrast, zoom, and spacing
Text should remain comfortable to read without relying on perfect lighting, vision, or display settings. Test body copy, labels, buttons, links, error messages, placeholder text, and text placed over images.
Look for:
- sufficient contrast between text and its background;
- clear non-colour cues for errors, selected states, and required fields;
- readable line length, line height, and paragraph spacing;
- text that can be enlarged without clipping or overlap;
- layouts that reflow at narrow widths instead of forcing horizontal scrolling; and
- controls that remain visible when browser zoom is increased.
Do not solve low contrast by making every element heavy or dark. A restrained type scale, clear spacing, and a small set of tested colour pairs usually produce a cleaner result. Avoid baking important text into images because it will not respond to user settings or be available to assistive technology.
Give images and media useful alternatives
Every meaningful image needs an alternative that serves the same purpose. Describe what matters in context rather than listing every visual detail. Decorative images should be ignored by assistive technology so they do not add noise.
For diagrams and charts, provide the conclusion and important data in nearby text. For audio and video, plan accurate captions and an appropriate transcript. Check that media controls are keyboard accessible, labelled, and not hidden until hover. Avoid autoplaying sound, and give visitors control over motion.
Alternative text is a content decision, not simply a media-library field. Two uses of the same image may need different alternatives because the surrounding message is different.
Make forms easy to understand and recover from
Contact, quote, checkout, and newsletter forms are common points of failure. Every control should have a persistent, programmatically connected label. Placeholder text can provide a hint, but it should not replace the label.
Confirm that:
- required fields are identified in text, not colour alone;
- instructions appear before they are needed;
- input purpose is clear and appropriate autocomplete attributes are used;
- validation errors identify the affected field and explain how to fix it;
- entered information is preserved after an error when possible;
- success messages are announced and visible; and
- time limits, if unavoidable, are explained and adjustable.
Test the complete form journey with a keyboard and a screen reader, including error recovery. A form that technically submits may still be unusable if focus jumps unpredictably or the error message is not announced.
Test mobile reflow and touch targets
Accessibility does not stop at desktop. Review portrait and landscape orientations, browser text enlargement, and common mobile widths. Buttons, links, and input controls should be large enough to activate without precision and spaced so adjacent actions are not easy to hit accidentally.
Watch for sticky headers that cover focused content, cookie banners that block controls, fixed-height cards that clip enlarged text, and menus that cannot be dismissed. Performance matters here too: a page that is slow or unstable can make navigation harder for users with cognitive, motor, or technical constraints. Pair accessibility work with sensible WordPress speed optimization rather than treating them as competing projects.
Include documents and third-party tools
The accessible journey often extends beyond the website template. Review downloadable PDFs, booking widgets, payment tools, chat systems, embedded maps, cookie controls, and marketing forms. A polished page does not compensate for an inaccessible booking or checkout step.
Ask vendors what they test, which standards they target, and how they handle reported barriers. Provide an accessible alternative when an essential third-party tool cannot be fixed immediately. For frequently used documents, consider whether the information should be published as structured HTML instead.
Use automated checks and manual testing together
Automated tools are useful for finding certain code, label, contrast, and structure problems at scale. They cannot determine whether alternative text is meaningful, focus order makes sense, instructions are understandable, or a complete journey is usable.
Build a repeatable review that combines:
- automated scanning across representative templates;
- keyboard-only navigation;
- screen reader checks on critical journeys;
- zoom, reflow, and mobile testing;
- content review for headings, links, alternatives, and instructions; and
- testing with people with disabilities when the project scope allows.
The W3C Easy Checks guide is a useful starting point, but it explicitly frames these checks as a first review rather than a complete evaluation. Record each issue with the affected page, the user impact, evidence, recommended fix, owner, and retest result.
Understand the Canadian context
Canada does not have one identical accessibility obligation for every organization. The Accessible Canada Act summary explains that the federal law applies to federally regulated entities. Provincial and territorial rules, procurement requirements, contracts, and sector-specific obligations may also matter.
Do not use a blog checklist to decide whether your organization is compliant. Confirm which requirements apply with qualified legal or accessibility professionals. Even when a specific rule does not apply, removing barriers improves access for customers, applicants, employees, and partners.
Turn the checklist into a manageable plan
Start with the paths that carry the most value and risk: navigation, contact, quote requests, account access, checkout, support, and essential documents. Prioritize issues that completely block a task before cosmetic inconsistencies.
A practical first month can look like this:
- Week 1: inventory templates, key journeys, third-party tools, and known complaints;
- Week 2: run automated checks and manual keyboard, zoom, and mobile reviews;
- Week 3: fix shared components such as navigation, buttons, forms, headings, and focus styles; and
- Week 4: retest, document remaining barriers, assign owners, and schedule the next review.
Shared fixes usually have the highest leverage. Correcting one reusable form component is better than patching the same error on ten pages. If your site needs a coordinated accessibility and design review, explore Nexxen Studio’s website and UI/UX services or contact us with the pages and journeys that matter most.
Accessibility is an ongoing quality practice. Make it part of content publishing, component design, development reviews, and regression testing so new barriers are caught before they reach visitors.
