Why Incremental Accessibility Improvements Are Worth Making
Full accessibility compliance is a goal worth working toward, but it doesn't have to happen all at once. Even partial improvements make a real difference for the people who use your site with assistive technology — screen readers, keyboard navigation, voice control software, and similar tools.
Nonprofits often serve populations with higher rates of disability, including older adults, veterans, and people with chronic health conditions. Making your site easier to use for those visitors is directly aligned with your mission — not just a technical checkbox.
Add Alt Text to Every Image
Alt text is a short description of an image written in the image's HTML code. Screen readers read this text aloud for visitors who cannot see images. Without it, those visitors hear nothing — or a long, meaningless filename. Adding alt text is one of the most impactful accessibility improvements you can make, and it's available in every major website platform without touching code.
Write alt text that describes what the image shows and why it's there. A photo of a volunteer event might have alt text like: "Volunteers sorting food donations at a warehouse." For purely decorative images that carry no information, you can leave the alt field empty — this tells screen readers to skip the image entirely.
Fix Heading Structure Without Changing Your Design
Screen readers and keyboard users navigate pages by jumping between headings. If your headings are used for styling rather than structure — or if you skip from an H1 straight to an H3 — the page becomes hard to navigate for someone who can't see the visual layout.
You can fix this entirely in your content editor without touching design or code. Make sure each page has one H1, that H2s introduce major sections, and that H3s are used for subsections within those. This change is invisible to most visitors but makes a significant difference to those relying on assistive technology.
GoodSiteReport's accessibility audit identifies the specific missing alt text, heading errors, contrast issues, and form problems on your nonprofit's website — so you know exactly what to fix and in what order. Get your accessibility report.
Check Color Contrast on Your Text
Low contrast between text and its background is one of the most common accessibility failures on nonprofit websites. Light gray text on a white background, or white text on a medium-colored button, may look clean but can be unreadable for visitors with low vision or color blindness.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) require a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for body text. You can check your current contrast using free tools like the WebAIM Contrast Checker. If you find problems, adjusting the text or background color slightly is usually enough to meet the requirement without changing your design significantly.
Make Sure Forms Have Proper Labels
Contact forms, donation forms, and signup forms are critical pathways on nonprofit websites. If form fields don't have proper labels — visible text that identifies what each field is for — screen readers cannot tell users what information to enter.
Placeholder text inside a field (the gray text that disappears when you start typing) is not an adequate substitute for a label. It disappears the moment someone clicks into the field, which means the label is gone exactly when they need it most. Most website platforms let you add visible field labels without any custom code.
Audit Your Links for Descriptive Text
Links that say "click here" or "read more" are meaningless to someone navigating by screen reader, because the screen reader reads links out of context. A list of ten "click here" links sounds identical — the visitor has no way to know where each one goes.
Replace vague link text with descriptive text that explains the destination. Instead of "click here to donate," write "Donate to our annual fund." This change improves accessibility and also tends to improve SEO, since descriptive link text gives search engines additional context about the destination page.