Accessibility — Alt Text, ARIA & Screen Reader Support

Accessibility isn't optional polish — it's whether the site works at all

A meaningful share of internet users rely on screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, or other assistive technology to use the web. For them, a site without proper accessibility markup isn't just less pleasant — it can be genuinely unusable: images with no description, forms with no labels announced, headings that don't follow a logical order for navigation.

What's checked

• HTML lang attribute — whether the page declares its language, and whether that value is a valid code (screen readers use this to pick the right pronunciation).
• Image alt text — whether images have descriptive text read aloud by screen readers (also covered from an SEO angle in the Best Practices guide).
• Form labels — whether every input field has an associated, programmatically linked label, so a screen reader announces what the field is for.
• Heading hierarchy — whether headings follow a logical nested order (one h1, then h2s, then h3s under those) rather than skipping levels or using headings purely for visual size.
• Skip navigation link — a hidden "skip to content" link that lets keyboard users bypass repeated navigation on every page.
• ARIA landmarks — roles like navigation, main, and banner that help screen reader users jump directly to a page section instead of tabbing through everything sequentially.
• Empty links/buttons — interactive elements with no text, label, or title announce nothing at all.
• Duplicate IDs — duplicate id attributes silently break label associations and anchor links.
• Descriptive link text — flags vague text like "click here", meaningless when a screen reader user pulls up a list of all links on a page.
• Tabindex usage — flags positive tabindex values, which override natural, predictable tab order.
• Table headers — whether data tables use <th> so screen readers can announce row/column context.
• Iframe titles — embedded content (maps, videos, widgets) needs a title so it's announced as more than just "iframe".
• Media captions — whether <video>/<audio> elements include a captions track.
• Pinch-to-zoom — flags user-scalable=no or a restrictive maximum-scale, which blocks zooming for low-vision users.
• target="_blank" safety — new-tab links missing rel="noopener" don't warn screen reader users of the context change, and carry a security gap besides.
• Focus outline removal — flags outline:none in inline or embedded styles, which strips the visible keyboard focus indicator.
• Duplicate accesskeys — two elements sharing the same keyboard shortcut create unpredictable behavior.

This module is informational (Intel) rather than scored — it doesn't add to or subtract from your 100-point total, but every issue found still appears with a recommendation.

Why this matters beyond compliance

Many of these markets also carry legal accessibility requirements (varying by jurisdiction and business type), but the more direct case is simpler: fixing these issues genuinely expands who can use your site, and good semantic structure tends to help SEO at the same time, since search engines parse pages in a broadly similar way to assistive technology.