Picture somebody who can't use a mouse. Maybe it's arthritis. Maybe a stroke. Maybe they're blind, and a screen reader reads your page out loud to them.

They land on your site and press Tab to get to your Contact button. Nothing they can see happens. The button is sitting under a cookie banner. They try again. Then they go to your competitor.

You'd never know it happened. That's the part that gets me.

A website accessibility audit is how you find those moments before a customer does. I ran four of them this summer. Here's what I learned, and why I think it's worth your attention even if nobody has asked you about it yet.

More of Your Customers Need This Than You Think

According to the CDC, more than 1 in 4 adults in the United States reported a disability in 2022. That's over 70 million people. Among adults 65 and older, it was 43.9 percent.

So if your customers skew older, close to half of them may be dealing with something that makes the web harder to use. Poor eyesight. Hands that don't hold still. A memory that doesn't hang on to a password.

This isn't a niche. It's a big slice of the people you're trying to reach. And the fixes help everybody. A button that's easy to hit with a shaky hand is also easy to hit with a thumb on a bumpy bus.

And Yes, Businesses Get Sued Over It

I don't want to scare you into this. But the risk is real. According to the law firm Seyfarth Shaw, plaintiffs filed 3,117 website accessibility lawsuits in federal court in 2025. That's up 27 percent from the year before, and it doesn't count state courts or demand letters.

Seyfarth also points out why there are so many. These cases are easy to file. The person suing doesn't even have to leave the house.

I'd rather you fix your site because it's the right thing to do. But it's good to know the stakes.

What I Found When I Went Back Over My Own Work

One of the four sites was one I'd already worked on. We'd brought it up to WCAG 2.1 AA. (WCAG is the accessibility standard most people measure against, and AA is the level almost everyone asks for.)

This time the request was for WCAG 2.2, the newer version. It's a little more stringent. It keeps everything from 2.1 and, according to the W3C, adds six new checks at the levels most people care about.

So I didn't start from scratch. I went back over that site against the new checks. And when I saw other problems along the way, I reported those too. A scope is a budget. It isn't a blindfold.

On another site, I found eleven problems. Two of them only exist in the newer standard. The worst was the cookie banner. A keyboard user pressing Tab walked right off the banner and onto links and buttons buried underneath it. I confirmed three of them on the first screen alone.

Nobody would call a cookie banner an accessibility problem. But for that visitor, the site was broken.

What the Newer Rules Ask For, in Plain English

You don't need the technical names. Here's what they boil down to. Don't hide whatever someone is working on behind a sticky header, chat bubble or banner. Make buttons and icons big enough to hit. Don't make dragging the only way to do something. Keep your phone number or contact link in the same place on every page. Don't make people type the same information twice. And don't turn logging in into a memory test.

Most of that is common courtesy. It's what a good receptionist does without being told.

Where I'd Start If It Were My Site

1. Put your mouse away. Use only Tab and Enter. Can you always see where you are? Can you reach your contact form and send it?
2. Try it on your phone with your thumb. Anything you miss on the first try is too small for someone with a tremor.
3. Skip the quick-fix widget. Those little accessibility buttons are sold as compliance. They aren't.
4. Get a real website accessibility audit by a person if someone has asked you for one, or if you have an old report. A scanner can't press Tab and watch what happens.

Why I Care About This

A website accessibility audit isn't glamorous work. Nobody sends a thank-you note because they could finally reach a button. But somebody out there could finally use the site, and that's the whole point.

If you'd like me to take a look at yours, I'm happy to. You can reach me through my services page. I'll tell you plainly what I find, and what's worth fixing first.

Sources

• CDC Data Shows Over 70 Million U.S. Adults Reported Having a Disability, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, July 16, 2024
• Federal Court Website Accessibility Lawsuit Filings Bounce Back in 2025, Seyfarth Shaw, March 2026
• What's New in WCAG 2.2, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative