One in Six People Has a Disability. Can They Use Your Website?
About 1.3 billion people live with a significant disability. What gets in their way online, why it matters for your site, and where to start fixing it.
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 billion people, about one in six, live with a significant disability (WHO, 2023). Add everyone with a temporary injury, an ageing pair of eyes or a phone in bright sunlight, and the number of people who struggle with a badly built website gets a lot bigger.
In the EU, the European Accessibility Act has applied since 28 June 2025. It covers a lot of everyday digital services, e-commerce and banking among them. So the real question is how far your site is from where it needs to be.
What gets in the way
Web accessibility means people can use your site whatever their abilities, device or connection. The most common barriers look like this.
Vision
Blind and low-vision users rely on screen readers, zoom or high-contrast settings. Images without text alternatives, unlabelled buttons and layouts that break at 200% zoom shut them out quickly. A friend of mine who is visually impaired regularly gives up on online shops for exactly these reasons.
Hearing
Videos without captions or transcripts leave deaf and hard-of-hearing users with half the information, or none.
Motor
Some people can’t use a mouse. They need everything to work with a keyboard or a switch, and targets big enough to hit.
Cognitive
Clear structure, plain language and predictable navigation help everyone, and they make the difference for people with cognitive disabilities.
Context
Glare, a cracked screen or a slow connection turn small design choices into real obstacles.
What it costs to ignore it
People who can’t use your site leave. You lose the sale, the sign-up or the reader, and you rarely find out why, because most of them won’t write in to complain. With the EAA in force, there’s now legal risk on top of that.
The upside is that most accessibility fixes make the site better for everyone. Proper headings and semantic HTML also help search engines understand your pages, which is a nice side effect.
Where to start
- Run an automated scan, but don’t stop there. Tools like axe, WAVE or Lighthouse find the obvious problems in minutes. They only catch about 30% of them, so a clean report is only a first step.
- Test it yourself. Put the mouse away and go through your main pages with the keyboard. Then turn on a screen reader (VoiceOver on a Mac, NVDA on Windows) and try to complete a real task, like buying something or filling in the contact form.
- Fix what blocks people first. A checkout you can’t finish matters more than a slightly low contrast ratio in the footer.
- Test with disabled users. Nothing replaces watching someone who uses assistive technology every day try your site.
- Write it into the spec. Accessibility is cheapest when it’s in the requirements from day one.
If you’ve run into a site that shut you out, or you’re working through this on your own product, I’d like to hear about it. You can reach me on LinkedIn.