Author Website Accessibility

Approximately 15% of the global population lives with some form of disability that affects how they use the internet — visual impairments that require screen readers or high contrast, motor impairments that require keyboard navigation instead of mouse use, cognitive differences that benefit from clear structure and simple language, and hearing impairments that affect multimedia content consumption. These are readers. Some of them want to read your books.

Author website accessibility is the practice of building and maintaining your site so that readers who use assistive technologies and adaptive strategies can find your books, learn about your work, sign up for your email list, and buy from your store. It is also, in most jurisdictions, increasingly a legal consideration — ADA compliance in the US, EN 301 549 in the EU, and similar standards elsewhere are beginning to apply to commercial websites in ways that affect indie authors who run direct sales operations.

This guide covers the practical accessibility improvements that have the most impact on author websites, how each major website platform handles accessibility, and the free tools that let you check your current site without technical expertise.

What WCAG Actually Means

WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — is the international standard for web accessibility, published by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). The current version is WCAG 2.2. It defines three compliance levels: A (minimum), AA (standard recommended target), and AAA (enhanced).

For an indie author website, the practical target is WCAG 2.2 Level AA — the level that covers the most common and highest-impact accessibility issues without requiring advanced development expertise. Most of the AA requirements can be addressed through content decisions, design choices, and platform settings rather than custom code.

You do not need to understand WCAG in technical detail to make meaningful accessibility improvements to your author website. Understanding the five principles below covers the vast majority of what matters practically.

The Five Most Impactful Accessibility Improvements for Author Websites

1. Image Alt Text — The Single Most Common Failure

Alt text is the text description added to images in your HTML that screen readers read aloud to visually impaired visitors. When a screen reader user reaches your book cover image and the alt text is empty or reads 'image001.jpg,' they receive no information about what the image is. When the alt text reads 'The Last Gate — paperback cover showing a broken stone archway at sunset, with the author name Randall Wood in gold lettering,' they receive the same information a sighted reader gets from the cover.

How to add alt text on each platform:

• WordPress: click any image in the Block Editor, find the Alt Text field in the right sidebar, and enter your description

• Squarespace: click an image block, go to Edit > Design > Accessibility, and enter the alt text

• Wix: right-click an image, select Settings, and find the Alt Text field

• Shopify: in your product image settings, click the image and enter the Description/Alt text

Good alt text describes what is in the image, not why it is there. 'Book cover' is not descriptive. 'Book cover showing a woman in a red cloak standing on a cliff edge above a stormy sea, title The Iron Kingdom in white serif lettering' is descriptive.

2. Color Contrast — Text That's Actually Readable

Color contrast is the ratio of luminosity between your text color and its background. Low contrast — gray text on white background, white text on yellow background — makes text difficult or impossible to read for visitors with low vision, color blindness, or who read in bright light.

WCAG AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (18pt or larger). The free WebAIM Contrast Checker (webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker) lets you enter two hex color codes and see the contrast ratio immediately. Enter your body text color and background color; if the ratio is below 4.5:1, adjust until it meets the standard.

Most readability-focused author website designs already meet contrast requirements for body text. Common failures: gray tagline text on white backgrounds, light colored text on medium-dark backgrounds in hero sections, and text overlaid on photographic backgrounds where the contrast varies across the image.

3. Keyboard Navigation — Trapping Users in Your Forms

Some visitors navigate websites entirely by keyboard — using Tab to move between elements, Enter to activate buttons, and arrow keys to navigate menus — because they cannot use a mouse. Author websites frequently have two keyboard navigation issues worth checking:

Tab order: press Tab repeatedly on your Home page and verify that the focus indicator (typically a visible outline around the currently focused element) moves logically through your page in the order a reader would expect — header navigation, then main content, then sidebar, then footer. If focus jumps around unexpectedly or disappears entirely at some point, your tab order has a problem.

Form navigation: on your email signup form, verify that a keyboard user can tab to each field, enter text, and submit the form without requiring mouse interaction. Most standard email platform form embed codes handle this correctly; custom-coded or popup forms sometimes do not.

4. Descriptive Link Text — Not 'Click Here'

Screen reader users often navigate pages by jumping between links. If your links read 'Click here,' 'Read more,' and 'Learn more,' a screen reader user who lists all the links on your page sees a meaningless sequence of identical phrases. If your links read 'Read the first chapter of The Iron Kingdom,' 'Download your free reader magnet,' and 'See the full Iron Dawn series reading order,' the same list tells them exactly where each link goes.

Audit your author website for generic link text and replace it with descriptive alternatives. The most common offenders: 'Click here' buttons (replace with the action: 'Get Your Free Book'), 'Read more' links in blog post summaries (replace with 'Read the full post: [post title]'), and 'Buy now' buttons with no context (replace with 'Buy The Last Gate — Choose Your Store').

5. Page Structure — Headings That Make Sense

Screen reader users navigate complex pages by jumping between headings using keyboard shortcuts. A well-structured page has one H1 (the page's main title), H2s for major sections, and H3s for subsections. This hierarchy tells assistive technology users how the page is organized and lets them skip to the section they want.

Common heading structure failures on author websites: using heading tags for visual size rather than structure (making text large with H2 because it looks right, not because it is a major section heading), skipping heading levels (jumping from H1 to H4), or having no heading structure at all on book pages. Review each page's heading hierarchy in sequence and verify it makes logical sense read aloud in order.

Platform Accessibility Capabilities

Free Tools to Check Your Accessibility

Run your Home page, your most visited book page, and your newsletter landing page through WAVE. Address all red errors (failures) and evaluate amber warnings (potential issues). A perfect accessibility score is not a realistic goal for most author websites, but addressing all errors and the most significant warnings reaches a level of accessibility that serves the vast majority of visitors using assistive technologies.

Accessibility and SEO: The Connection

Many accessibility improvements directly benefit SEO as well as accessibility — they are not separate concerns:

• Alt text describes images to screen readers and to Google's image indexing — improving both accessibility and image search visibility

• Descriptive link text helps screen reader navigation and helps Google understand the context of linked pages

• Logical heading structure helps assistive technology navigation and helps Google understand page hierarchy and content organization

• Page load speed (covered in the Website Speed article) benefits both keyboard navigation (faster pages are easier to use) and Google rankings

Treating accessibility improvements as SEO improvements as well — which they are — makes the investment easier to prioritize alongside other website work.

Legal Considerations for Author Direct Stores

If you run a direct sales operation through your author website — WooCommerce, Shopify, or any other ecommerce system — the legal accessibility landscape is more relevant to you than for a pure author portfolio site. In the US, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) has been interpreted to apply to commercial websites, and litigation against small ecommerce sites has increased. In the EU, the European Accessibility Act requires ecommerce websites to meet accessibility standards.

This is not legal advice — consult an attorney for specific legal guidance. The practical takeaway: the five improvements covered in this article address the most common accessibility failures that appear in legal accessibility complaints. Implementing them reduces your exposure while genuinely serving readers who use assistive technology.

For more on legal pages, terms of service, and compliance requirements for your author website, see the Legal Pages and Business Compliance guide in ScribeCount's Author Business section.

Author Website Accessibility Checklist

• All images have descriptive alt text — covers, author photo, decorative images

• Body text color passes 4.5:1 contrast ratio against background (check with WebAIM Contrast Checker)

• All buy buttons and call-to-action links have descriptive text, not 'Click here' or 'Read more'

• Email signup forms are navigable by keyboard — Tab through all fields and submit without mouse

• Pages have logical heading hierarchy: one H1 per page, H2 for sections, H3 for subsections

• WAVE tool run on Home page, key book page, and newsletter landing page — red errors addressed

• PDFs linked from website have alt text for images within them (if applicable to your reader magnet delivery)

Accessibility is not a special project separate from your author website — it is part of building a website that works for every reader who wants to find you. The five improvements in this guide are concrete, actionable, and most can be completed in a few hours on any platform. Implement them, check your results with WAVE, and you will have an author website that serves the full range of readers you write for.

-Randall Wood