When businesses want to improve website conversions, they often look at calls to action, landing pages, forms, navigation and user behaviour.
But before changing any of these elements, there is a more fundamental question that is normally overlooked:
Can everyone who accesses your website actually use it?
It is quite obvious that if someone cannot use a website, they will not convert. And if you’re not yet considering digital accessibility as a potential barrier, it’s worth understanding the connection between website accessibility and conversions.
Website accessibility can affect how people navigate, understand and interact with your content. So, before you optimise your website for conversions, you should first make sure people can use it.
Website accessibility means making digital content and functionality usable by people with different abilities and ways of interacting with technology.
According to the WHO (World Health Organization) there are currently 1.3 billion people worldwide living with some type of disability.
This includes people who are blind or have low vision, people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, people with mobility or motor disabilities, and people with cognitive or neurological differences.
It is important to acknowledge that this number represents 16% of the world’s population. Also, according to the WHO, this number is increasing, partly due to population ageing and the increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases.
Although the main reason to have an accessible website is to remove barriers to people with disabilities, it also benefits people without a disability.
Someone who might temporarily lose access to a mouse, have a broken arm, be in a noisy environment, or simply prefer to navigate using a keyboard can also have a better experience on a website that is just simple to use.
An accessible website should allow people to navigate, understand content and complete actions easily and predictably. They should also be able to do so with the use of assistive technologies if necessary.
In Ireland, for example, the European Accessibility Act (EAA) has been in effect since 2025, requiring e-commerce and other digital services to offer accessible digital experiences, following WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
If you’re not yet familiar with how this accessibility law apply in Ireland, read the European Accessibility Act Compliance in Ireland 2026: Full Guide.
Conversion rates are influenced by many factors, including your offer, pricing, content, trust, performance and the needs of your audience.
So, does accessibility affect conversion? The answer is quite simple.
The connection between website accessibility and conversions is strong. Although it cannot guarantee a higher conversion rate, when accessibility barriers exist, they can prevent some users from completing a conversion journey at all.
Imagine the scenario where a user has difficulty in:
This is not only frustrating to experience. It can be the reason why people leave a website or abandon a customer journey.
For the person experiencing the barrier, this is not simply a poor user experience. It can prevent them from completing the action your website is designed to support.
That raises accessibility in the customer journey as something extremely important.
The Hidden Journey survey created by Nexer Digital found that 87% of disabled consumers say they can’t get through a typical shopping journey without help from someone else.
It shows that 43% asked someone else to finish the transaction for them, and 38% abandoned the purchase entirely. It also stated that 98% say they’re more likely to buy again from accessible websites.
While users with disabilities cannot complete a customer journey independently, the same study found that disabled people and their households have a combined annual spending power of £446 billion in the UK.
Not all friction comes from a confusing headline, too many form fields or an unclear call to action.
This is where the connection between website accessibility and conversions becomes important.
Sometimes, the problem is much more fundamental. And if it’s found to be related to digital accessibility barriers, it wouldn’t be a surprise.
We’re not guessing: the WebAIM 2026 Report found digital accessibility failures on that 95.9% of the top 1 million home pages tested.
Imagine an online checkout where customers can browse products and add items to their basket, but the payment process cannot be completed using a keyboard.
The business could spend time testing different checkout layouts or calls to action. But for people who cannot use the checkout with their preferred method of interaction, the problem happens before those optimisations can make a difference.
The same applies to lead generation.
A form might look simple and straightforward, but if the labels are unclear or required fields are not identified properly, some users will not be able to submit it.
This is why accessibility testing should be part of understanding the user journey, rather than something considered after conversion optimisation is complete.
The accessibility customer journey is not limited to a single button or page. Accessibility barriers can appear throughout the entire process.
A typical journey follows:
If an accessibility issue appears at any stage of this flow, it can create a barrier and affect the user experience.
To avoid that, there are some key points to take into consideration.
People need to be able to navigate your website and find the information they need.
Clear headings, meaningful link text, good colour contrast, logical page structure and accessible navigation can all support this.
For example, a page may look well organised visually but have a confusing heading structure for someone using a screen reader.
To make sure that people can find the information they’re looking for, you need to consider users with different abilities, ages and backgrounds when creating digital content.
Low-contrast text was detected on 83.9% of home pages, followed by missing alt text (53.1%) and missing form input labels (51.0%), according to The WebAIM 2026 Report.
This means considering text size, contrast, page structure, images, alternative text and the way information is presented.
If important information is only communicated visually, for example, some people may not receive the same information as other users.
For this reason, content should be presented in more than one format. This makes it less likely to exclude people with disabilities.
Videos, for example, should include subtitles and captions, so users with hearing disabilities can access the information.
Simple, clear and predictable communication is also the best approach to make sure everyone can understand your content.
Calls to action need to be usable, not just noticeable.
Buttons and links should work with keyboards and assistive technologies, have clear accessible names and give users enough information about what will happen when they activate them.
A button that works perfectly with a mouse is not necessarily accessible to everyone.
Another important consideration is that calls to action often do not have sufficient colour contrast, which can create a barrier, especially for people with low vision and colour blindness.
To prevent that, you can use our Free Colour Contrast Checker and make sure your colour combinations are easy to see and meet WCAG requirements.
Forms are often one of the most important conversion points on a website, making accessibility particularly important.
Users need to understand what information is required, know which field they are using and understand how to correct an error when one appears.
One common barrier related to forms is showing an error field with a red outline without clearly explaining what went wrong.
Accessible forms include clear labels, instructions, focus management and error messages.
To avoid losing conversions and revenue because of accessibility barriers, the first step is understanding where they occur on your website.
Automated accessibility testing is the quickest way to identify many common issues, including problems related to page structure, colour contrast, links, images, forms and other WCAG requirements.
Start with the Nexus Inclusion Free Website Accessibility Checker, which allows you to check your homepage and receive a report of accessibility issues without needing an account or payment details.
That will give you an understanding of your current compliance status, the severity of the accessibility issues found on your homepage, and how they affect users with disabilities.
This is a useful first analysis because accessibility issues often replicate across multiple pages of a website.
With this overview, you can then move to a full website accessibility scan.
The Nexus Inclusion Website Accessibility Testing can detect accessibility issues across your entire website and provide information about affected WCAG success criteria, impacted disability groups and suggested fixes, including code snippets to help teams resolve the issues.
An accessibility check should not stop at the homepage.
Think about accessibility across the customer journey, starting with what matter most to your organisation.
If your goal is to generate leads, test the journey from a landing page through to form submission.
If you sell products online, look at product pages, filters, shopping baskets, checkout and confirmation.
If users need to create an account, consider registration, login, password recovery and account management.
And do not only test the pages managed by marketing teams. Accessibility issues can also appear in navigation, search functions, pop-ups, menus and other interactive components.
This is where combining automated accessibility testing with manual audits becomes important.
Automated tools can detect many technical issues quickly and consistently. Manual testing can help check some aspects that are not exactly related to the website’s code. It can be used to look at how components behave during a real user journey.
Together, they can give you a more complete picture of your website's accessibility.
Websites change all the time. A new landing page is published. A form is updated. A developer changes a component. A marketing team adds a new campaign. A redesign introduces a new navigation pattern.
An accessibility issue can be introduced without anyone intentionally making the website less accessible.
That is why accessibility needs ongoing attention.
Nexus Inclusion Monitoring can help organisations keep track of website accessibility over time and detect issues as websites change.
Instead of waiting until the next full audit to discover that a problem has been introduced, teams can build accessibility checks into their ongoing website management process.
Conversion optimisation and accessibility do not need to be separate activities. They can work together when accessibility is considered from the beginning.
Before testing a new headline, check that people can navigate to it.
Before redesigning a form, make sure people can understand and complete it.
Before changing your CTA, check that the button or link works with different methods of interaction.
Before analysing why users abandon a journey, check if an accessibility barrier could be contributing to the problem.
Website accessibility and conversions should work together, because accessibility barriers can stop people from completing the journey. Before you optimise your website for conversions, make sure people can use it.
Implementing digital accessibility is more than running an accessibility test, fixing the issues and moving on. Although these are the first steps, there’s much more to it if you want to achieve WCAG compliance.
Make sure people can navigate your website, understand your content or complete a form, so they're able to convert.
