The accessibility work you can do this afternoon

Accessibility gets framed as a rebuild, which is a convenient framing if you would rather not start. The expensive accessibility work is real. It is also not where most sites are failing.

Six things, one afternoon

1. Give every image an alt attribute, and give the decorative ones an empty one
2. Make sure every interactive element is reachable and visible with a keyboard
3. Check that focus outlines have not been switched off in a reset
4. Raise any body text below 4.5:1 contrast until it passes
5. Label every form field with a real <label>, not a placeholder
6. Put a skip link before the header

That is most of a typical failure report.

Focus states are the tell

If you tab through a site and lose track of where you are, nobody tested it with a keyboard. It takes ninety seconds to find out and it is the single most reliable signal of whether anyone has looked.

The part that is genuinely hard

Custom components — comboboxes, date pickers, anything with a modal. Those need real work and real testing with a screen reader. Do the afternoon’s worth first, so the hard list is short enough to be honest about.