WordPress accessibility: a practical checklist for small business sites

Updated October 24, 2026 · 7 min read

WordPress itself has an accessibility team and coding standards, but your site's accessibility depends mostly on three things you control: your theme, your plugins, and your content. Here's a practical checklist.

Theme

Start from an accessibility-ready theme. WordPress.org lets theme authors tag themes that pass a set of accessibility requirements; you can browse accessibility-ready themes. The tag is a good starting point, not a guarantee.
Check the skip link. Press Tab once on any page. A "Skip to content" link should appear.
Check focus styles. Keep tabbing. If you can't see where you are, the theme has removed focus outlines. A small CSS fix restores them:

/* Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS */
a:focus-visible, button:focus-visible, input:focus-visible,
select:focus-visible, textarea:focus-visible {
  outline: 3px solid #b34700;
  outline-offset: 2px;
}

Check the mobile menu. Can you open it, move through it, and close it with only the keyboard? Does the button have a name like "Menu"?

Content in the block editor

Headings: use the Heading block, not bold paragraph text. Use one H1 (usually the page title), then H2s for sections and H3s inside them. Don't pick a heading level for its size.
Alt text: fill in "Alternative text" in the Image block settings. Describe what the image means in context. For purely decorative images, leave it empty.
Links: write link text that makes sense alone. "Download our price list (PDF)" beats "click here."
Color: if you change text or button colors, check the contrast is at least 4.5:1 for normal text.
Tables: use the Table block with a header row for data, never for layout.
Video: add captions; auto-generated captions usually need editing.

Plugins

Forms: your contact form plugin should give every field a visible label (not just placeholder text) and announce errors clearly. Test it with a keyboard and screen reader. See form accessibility best practices.
Sliders and pop-ups: these are frequent trouble spots. If a slider moves automatically, it needs a pause button. Pop-ups need to take focus, be closable with Esc, and return focus when closed.
Page builders: some produce messy markup. Check headings and buttons in the result, not just the editor.
Overlay plugins: we don't recommend them; here's why we don't use overlays.

Checking your WordPress site

There are WordPress plugins that scan your pages for accessibility problems, and free browser tools like WAVE and axe DevTools work on any site. You can also use our free accessibility checker for any WordPress page. Whatever scanner you use, follow up with the manual checks in our accessibility audit guide, because scanners only catch part of the picture.