How to Test Any Website for Accessibility Issues as a Regular User

You don't need to be a developer to spot accessibility problems. A few simple checks, using only your browser and keyboard, reveal many of the most common barriers people with disabilities face.

1. Use only the keyboard

Put your mouse aside. Press Tab to move forward through links and buttons, Shift+Tab to go back, Enter to follow a link and Space to press a button.

• Can you see where you are? There should be a visible outline on the focused item.
• Can you reach every menu, button and form field?
• Can you close pop-ups with Esc?
• Do you ever get stuck?

2. Zoom in

Press Ctrl and + (or Cmd and + on Mac) to zoom to 200%, then 400%. At 400% on a normal laptop screen, the page should become a single column without scrolling sideways (WCAG 1.4.10). Check whether text overlaps, gets cut off or disappears.

3. Check color and contrast

• Is the text easy to read against its background?
• Is information shown by color alone, such as "fields in red are required"?
• Can you tell links apart from normal text?

See contrast ratio.

4. Look at images

Right-click an image and choose Inspect to see its alt text. Images that carry meaning should have a description; decorative ones should have an empty one. See alt text.

5. Check videos

Do videos have captions? Do they autoplay with sound? Can you pause them?

6. Try forms

• Does every field have a visible label, not just placeholder text?
• When you make a mistake, does the error explain what to fix?
• Are there time limits you can't extend?

7. Run a free checker

Chrome's built-in Lighthouse (in DevTools) and the free WAVE extension flag missing alt text, low contrast and missing labels. Automated tools catch only part of the problems, so use them alongside the manual checks. See accessibility testing extensions.

Report what you find

Tell the site owner what you tried, what happened and what you expected. See reporting accessibility barriers.

Help for readers

If dense pages are hard to follow, ADHD Reading Focus shows one paragraph at a time in larger text.