Web accessibility isn’t just a legal requirement, but a foundation of good user experience. Yet despite growing awareness in recent years, many websites still fall short in key areas that affect real users every day. After dozens of audits across different industries, a pattern has emerged: the same three issues keep coming up, and they’re often easy to fix. Tackling them can significantly improve usability, inclusivity, and site performance.
At Matrix Internet, we’ve worked with a wide range of clients, from public sector bodies to innovative, digital private sectors. All are striving to make their websites more inclusive and user-friendly. More than ever, accessibility is becoming a strategic priority. Whether it’s to meet new regulations like the European Accessibility Act or simply to serve users better or improve the performance of the site, our clients are embracing accessibility as part of their digital evolution.
As part of this shift, many choose to start with a Matrix Accessibility Audit — a structured review that highlights key issues and opportunities. These audits help teams understand where their digital products fall short and what changes can make the biggest difference for real users.
This journey isn’t just valuable for our clients, it’s also meaningful for us. With every project, we’ve gained deeper insight into what it truly means to design for everyone. We’re committed to creating digital experiences rooted in universal design principles, and each accessibility audit sharpens our understanding of how real users interact with the web, often in ways overlooked during typical design and development cycles.
Through our audits across a wide range of industries, we’ve seen clear patterns emerge. While every website presents its own challenges, the same core barriers to meeting WCAG 2.2 standards appear time and again, and many have straightforward, code-level solutions.
Here are the top three issues clients face when working toward accessibility compliance:
A ‘skip to content’ button allows users who depend on keyboard-only navigation or screen readers to bypass the top navigation and go straight to the main content. This includes people who are blind, have motor impairments, or use assistive technology. Without it, they must tab through every header and menu item on every page just to reach the core content. This process can involve dozens of repetitive keystrokes, especially on sites with complex navigation.
A missing ‘skip to content’ button is surprisingly common. Many websites simply forget to include this basic feature. Yet implementing a visible, functioning skip link can instantly improve usability. It’s a small detail with a big impact.
Accessibility overlays and plugins often market themselves as one-click solutions to WCAG compliance, but in reality, they can mask problems rather than solve them. These tools can interfere with screen readers, create inconsistent behaviour across browsers, and even introduce new accessibility issues, especially if developers haven’t invested time in configuring them to work with users’ assistive technologies.
Plugins don’t address underlying semantic HTML issues like heading structure, label associations, or keyboard navigation. Relying on a plugin is like painting over a cracked wall — it might look fine at a glance, but the structure underneath is still broken. True accessibility is baked into the code — this means writing meaningful HTML, designing with interaction in mind, and thinking about how real users with real limitations navigate a site.
PDFs are often treated as an afterthought, yet they’re a key part of many websites, especially in government, education and corporate settings. Unfortunately, most PDFs are not accessible by default. Many are simply scanned images with no text layer, or they lack essential structure like headings, tags, reading order, or alt text.
For people using screen readers, this turns a PDF into a blank or chaotic experience — inaccessible, disorienting, and sometimes impossible to interpret. Accessibility here requires more than uploading a file — it means planning PDFs like webpages, using proper tagging, ensuring logical flow, and testing with assistive tools. It’s making sure all users get the same information regardless of how they access it.
Accessibility plays a vital role in delivering a quality user experience. While overlays and quick fixes can fall short, meaningful improvements to your code and content go much further.
If you’re not sure where to begin, an accessibility audit and a few well-targeted changes can have an immediate and lasting impact — helping you create a more inclusive, user-friendly website for all.
Want to start making those changes? Let’s talk.
Get in touch today about your accessibility needs
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