Website Accessibility for Law Firms: A Plain-English Guide to WCAG

12 September 2026·5 min read

Quick answer: Website accessibility means making sure anyone — including people using screen readers, keyboard navigation, or who simply need bigger text or higher contrast — can actually read and use your site. It's not one setting you switch on; it's a checklist of smaller fixes (contrast, alt text, readable font sizes, labelled forms, keyboard-friendly navigation) applied across every page. This is general best-practice guidance, not a compliance audit — below is a plain-English checklist and where firms typically fall short. 📱

A law firm's website is often visited at the worst moment in someone's life — mid-divorce, mid-dispute, mid-crisis — and that's exactly the moment a hard-to-read site does the most damage. Accessibility isn't a niche technical concern; it's whether a stressed, tired, or vision-impaired person can actually find your phone number. 💖

Please note: general information, not legal advice — check current official guidance before relying on it.

What most firms get wrong

Assuming it's an all-or-nothing legal box to tick — accessibility is a spectrum of improvements, not a single pass/fail test you either meet or don't.
Low-contrast "on-brand" text — pale grey text on a white background looks elegant and is genuinely hard to read for a lot of visitors.
Decorative-only image alt text — leaving alt text blank or filled with "image123.jpg" tells a screen reader user nothing.
Tiny font sizes on mobile — a beautifully designed desktop site that's unreadable once it's shrunk onto a phone.
Forms with no visible labels — placeholder text that disappears the moment someone starts typing, leaving no label behind.

The plain-English accessibility checklist

Contrast: body text should be clearly dark against a light background (or vice versa) — if you have to squint, so will your visitors.

Alt text: every meaningful image gets a short, real description of what it shows — not the file name, not left blank.

Font size: body text no smaller than roughly 16px, with headings clearly larger — nothing that needs zooming to read comfortably.

Form labels: every field (name, email, matter type) has a visible label that stays put, not just placeholder text.

Keyboard navigation: someone should be able to tab through your menu, forms and buttons without ever touching a mouse.

Run your own homepage and enquiry form through this list before touching anything else on the site — it's usually where the highest-traffic accessibility issues live.

Worked examples

Small, specific fails with equally small, specific fixes — nothing here requires a site rebuild. 📈

Family law firm: A soft lavender-on-white heading style looked calming but failed contrast badly on mobile. The fix: darkened the heading colour slightly and tested it against the background at actual phone brightness, not just on a designer's monitor.

Commercial law firm: Every team headshot had alt text reading "photo.jpg", so a screen reader announced nothing useful about who was who. The fix: each image got a short, real description — name and role — added in an afternoon.

Conveyancing firm: The enquiry form used placeholder text ("Your name") instead of real labels, so the field looked empty and unclear once someone started typing. The fix: added a permanent visible label above each field, with the placeholder kept only as a secondary hint.

How to actually check your site

You don't need specialist software to start. Zoom your own site to 200% and see what breaks. Try navigating your homepage and enquiry form using only the Tab key. Turn your monitor brightness down and check whether your body text is still readable. For a more thorough pass, a free browser extension that checks colour contrast and flags missing alt text will catch most of the common issues in a few minutes per page. None of this replaces a proper accessibility audit if you need one for compliance reasons — it's a first, practical pass any firm can run in-house.

💡 Heads up: Accessibility fixes tend to improve your site for everyone, not just the visitors who strictly need them — better contrast and clearer forms reduce bounce and lift enquiry completion across the board, which makes this a CRO project as much as an inclusion one.

Mistakes to avoid once you start fixing things

Fixing contrast but ignoring forms — the enquiry form is usually the highest-stakes page on the whole site.
Treating it as a one-off project — new pages and blog posts need the same checks, not just the original site build.
Over-relying on automated checkers — they catch a lot, but not everything; a quick manual tab-through still matters.
Assuming your website builder handles it automatically — most platforms make accessibility possible, not automatic.

Frequently asked questions

Is our website legally required to meet WCAG standards?

Requirements vary significantly by jurisdiction, sector and circumstance, and this is genuinely a legal question rather than a marketing one — check current official guidance relevant to your region and practice rather than assuming a general blog answer covers your specific obligations.

What is WCAG, in plain English?

It's an internationally recognised set of guidelines for making websites usable by people with a range of disabilities — covering things like contrast, text alternatives for images, and keyboard navigation. Think of it as an established best-practice standard, similar in spirit to page speed or mobile-friendliness guidelines.

Can our current website theme make this harder to fix?

Sometimes, yes — some website themes bake in low-contrast colour schemes or non-standard form fields that resist easy fixes. If your theme fights you on every item on the checklist, that's a sign it may be worth a conversation with your web developer about the underlying template, not just page-by-page patches.

Does fixing accessibility guarantee our site is fully compliant?

No — this checklist covers common, high-impact issues, but full conformance with a formal accessibility standard is a more detailed technical exercise, usually involving proper testing tools and sometimes an external audit. Treat this as a strong starting point, not a finish line. 🌴

Keep reading 🤍

Written by

Kate, founder of Chronically Online

I help Gold Coast and Brisbane businesses grow with branding, websites and marketing that actually works.

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