Website Accessibility: Manual Checks and Tools for 2025

Website Accessibility Tools are essential for making digital content accessible and usable for everyone since 1.3 billion people worldwide – 16% of the world’s population – live with significant disabilities. Yet 96% of the million top web pages analyzed in 2023 had accessibility problems, pointing to a lack of meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Accessible web design has another important impact on businesses, in addition to inclusivity. People with disabilities spend around US$1.2 trillion annually in disposable income, and that is a significant consideration for technical SEO guides and SEO professional services that are looking to increase online reach and engagement.

With 75% of Americans with disabilities using the internet daily, improving web accessibility not only expands your audience but also aligns with evolving legal requirements and enhances user experience. In this blog, Pentra SEO Services will explore essential Website Accessibility Tools and strategies, helping you optimize your website for inclusivity while staying ahead in a competitive digital landscape.

Website Accessibility

What is website accessibility?

Website accessibility is about designing and developing websites that are accessible and usable for everybody. It means that content on digital media should be accessible to users with visual impairment, motor challenges, hearing impairment, or cognitive disability.

The following features should be tested to check how well your website supports diverse needs:

Color contrast

Scaling and resizable text

Compatibility with screen readers

Navigation by keyboard

Large, easy-to-operate cursors and controls

It is not only morally right but also a smart business move to ensure that your website is user-friendly to everyone. An accessible website expands your potential audience, creating an inclusive experience while broadening your customer base.

Manual checks for website accessibility

Manual accessibility checks require that human evaluators take great care in reviewing several aspects of a website to ensure they adhere to certain accessibility standards, which may include the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). What follows is an explanation of what those aspects are and what the components include:

Text alternatives

One of the important accessibility practices is ensuring that all images and other non-text contents contain descriptive alt text. In other words, alt text describes the purpose or content of an image in a way that may be read by a screen reader to communicate it with the user.

For example, an icon on a button should have an alt text like “Submit form” to clarify its action. Without these descriptions, assistive technologies users would miss important context, challenging them in their efforts to interact with the website effectively.

Keyboard navigation

All interactive elements, like menus, forms, and buttons, must be keyboard-only operable. This requirement applies to people with mobility disabilities who rely on keyboards or other adaptive switches and assistive devices to interact with a website. Manual testing requires the user’s ability to move through a website using only the “Tab,” “Shift+Tab,” and “Enter” keys and check whether all functional features, including dropdown menus and modals, work properly. Proper management of focus as the focus indicator visually depicts the active ones is fundamental in this assessment.

Color contrast

Color contrast between text and its background must meet the minimum WCAG contrast ratios (4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text) to ensure readability for users with visual impairments, including color blindness.

Manual testing often includes evaluating content under various lighting conditions or using contrast analysis tools to verify compliance. For example, white background text in light gray may be unreadable for some, so alternative colors or contrast-enhancing techniques should be used.

Screen reader compatibility

Websites should be designed using semantic HTML, including correct heading usage, ARIA landmarks, and role attributes to ensure compatibility with screen readers. Manual testers use tools such as NVDA, JAWS, or VoiceOver to check how well the site communicates its structure and content.

For example, it checks for the reasonableness of heading levels (H1-H2 not H4) and ensures dynamically changing elements, such as pop-up messages or error messages, are also announced.

Why is manual testing crucial?

Although useful in finding some kinds of accessibility issues, automated tools can miss much more subtle problems. For example, it may not be able to detect whether the alt text is present but not meaningful in context or that complex interactions such as drag-and-drop functions are not keyboard operable.

Human evaluators will bring into the assessment a real-world understanding of usability problems, thereby ensuring that the website offers an entirely inclusive experience to all its users.

Automated tools for website accessibility

Accessibility testing tools automatically and quickly identify common accessibility issues found on websites. Automated accessibility tools in testing will help streamline the initial stages of testing by quickly pointing to problems such as:

No alt text for images: Important visual information is accessible to users who depend on screen readers.

Low contrast: Checks whether the text and the background color meet accessibility standards to enable readable content for anyone.

Incorrect ARIA attributes: Identifies the incorrect usage of ARIA roles and properties, which may cause a breakdown in assistive technology navigation.

Though these tools are extremely helpful, no tool can catch everything; thus, manual testing should also be conducted to determine even more subtle issues.

Some automated tools includes:

Axe

Axe is a powerful browser extension that integrates directly into your development workflow. It provides real-time feedback, highlighting accessibility issues on the fly, and assists developers in solving problems at the point of coding. The tool is very easy to understand for both technical and non-technical teams in identifying accessibility concerns.

WAVE

WAVE, another useful extension of a browser, visually pinpoints accessibility issues right on the page. It overlays icons and indicators on the site to create clear and actionable insights of problems like missing labels or lack of contrast. This can be a great tool for visual learners who like to know exactly where things are going wrong.

Lighthouse

Lighthouse is an added feature in Chrome DevTools which audits more than accessibility in terms of website performance such as SEO and best practices. It provides detailed reports and breaks down accessibility scores as well as recommendations for improvement. Its holistic nature makes it a favorite for developers who want to optimize across multiple dimensions.

While these tools speed up accessibility testing and make it relatively effortless, they have their limitations. They can catch easy problems but tend to overlook context-dependent or related-to-user-experience issues. This is why automated testing must be accompanied by manual testing: such blending only strengthens one’s ability to understand the matters being tested.

Conclusion

In 2025, website accessibility is critical for compliance and user experience. Pentra SEO Services combines manual checks and automated tools to create inclusive digital environments while optimizing your site for performance. Our offerings include keyword research, local SEO services, SEO content writing, graphic design, and more, ensuring a comprehensive approach to online success. Partner with us to enhance accessibility, boost search rankings, and engage a broader, more diverse audience.