Introduction
In an increasingly connected world, creating an accessible website is a priority for developers and businesses. In 2025, accessibility is not only a legal requirement in many countries, it is also a key to offering an optimal user experience, reaching a wider audience, and improving your natural referencing (SEO).
Webflow offers a range of powerful and intuitive tools to design accessible and efficient sites. This article explores how to use Webflow to meet accessibility standards while optimizing the performance and SEO of your web projects.
Why is accessibility critical?
Web accessibility means making your site usable by everyone, including people with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities. Here's why it matters:
- Compliance with regulations : Many legislations, such as the RGAA in France or the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) at the international level, require websites that comply with accessibility standards.
- Improving SEO : An accessible site is often better referenced. Alternative tags, logical content structure, and optimal load times promote better indexing by Google.
- Increase in audience : By making your site inclusive, you're expanding your reach to millions more people.
- Improving the user experience (UX) : A well-designed site is easy for anyone to navigate, with or without disabilities.
Webflow offers you many courses to allow you to develop the accessibility of your site.
1. Webflow and accessibility: a commitment to inclusiveness
At Webflow, the mission to democratize access to software creation requires a strong commitment to accessibility. Vlad Magdalin, Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder of Webflow, highlights: “To achieve our mission of democratizing access to software creation, we need to ensure that the experiences created with Webflow, and Webflow itself, are accessible to as many people as possible.”
The goal of Webflow is to make tools and experiences accessible to a wider audience while promoting continuous evolution in this area, providing users with the resources they need to create more accessible sites.
The approach”Client First” can allow you to make your site even more accessible.
2. Adopt correct semantic tags with Webflow
Why is it important? HTML tags like<header>,<main>,<section>, or <footer>help screen readers understand the structure of your page.
How do I do it with Webflow? Webflow allows you to easily assign semantic tags to each section or block via its visual editor. For example:
- Select a section on your page.
- In the Settings panel, assign the correct HTML tag.
3. Optimize alt tags for images
Why is it important? Alt tags describe image content to users with visual disabilities and also help Google index your images.
Steps with Webflow:
- Click on an image in the editor.
- Fill in the “Alt text” field with a clear and concise description.
SEO tip: Include relevant keywords without over-optimizing.
4. Ensure keyboard navigation
Why is it important? Many users only navigate with a keyboard. A well-thought-out navigation should allow access to all interactive elements (buttons, links, menus) via the Tab key.
Solution with Webflow: Activate “visible focus” in the design settings to clearly show where the keyboard focus is. Test your site with keyboard navigation to detect possible blockages.
5. Use contrasting colors
Why is it important? Insufficient contrast between text and background makes your site difficult to read, especially for visually impaired users.
Tools to use: Webflow has an integrated color editor. Check your color combinations with tools like Contrast Checker.
You can check the contrast ratio of the text on your site directly from the Webflow color picker. It shows not only the contrast ratio of the text, but also the WCAG classification level that corresponds to this contrast ratio.
Best practices: Use a minimum contrast ratio of 4. 5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
Test your site with accessibility tools
Why is it important? Testing ensures that your site meets WCAG standards.
Recommended tools:
- Wave (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) : Identify accessibility issues.
- Lighthouse (built into Chrome) : Analyze performance, SEO and accessibility.
6. Create accessible forms
Why is it important? Misconfigured forms may be unusable for some users.
Practical steps with Webflow:
- Add labels for each form field.
- Include clear and descriptive error messages.
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7. Make your site mobile-friendly
Why is it important? Responsive design is critical to providing a good experience on all devices, especially for users with disabilities.
How do I do it with Webflow? Webflow automatically optimizes your designs for mobile. However, check:
- The readability of the texts.
- The size of the buttons (at least 48x48 pixels to be easily clicked).
8. Add transcripts and subtitles for media content
Why is it important? Videos and audios without transcripts exclude users who are hard of hearing.
Webflow tip: Integrate accessible media players and add transcripts directly into your pages.
9. Generate an XML sitemap and optimize SEO
A clear sitemap improves indexing and navigation for all users.
Tip with Webflow: Activate the “Sitemap” option in Webflow's SEO settings. Submit it in Google Search Console.
10. Train yourself and raise the awareness of your customers
Accessibility is an ongoing process. Educate your customers and your team on current standards.
Helpful resources:
- The official site WCAG.
- La Webflow documentation dedicated to accessibility.
11. Integrate accessibility considerations into your design process
The Web should be accessible to everyone, but this is often not the case for people who are blind, partially sighted, deaf, hard of hearing, or have cognitive, learning, or mobility disabilities. Around 15% of the world's population has a disability, which is more than 1 billion people who have a negative user experience when designs don't take accessibility into account.
Inaccessibility on the web is not caused by disabilities or a lack of tools, but by designs that interfere with assistive technology (AT). These include settings and devices that help people interact with the digital world, such as:
- Screen readers : Converts text, buttons, images, and other page elements into speech or Braille for people who are blind, deafblind, visually impaired, or have cognitive or learning disabilities.
- Enlargement : Increase the size of objects on the screen for people with poor eyesight.
- Keyboards : Allows the use of keyboard controls (instead of a mouse) for people with reduced mobility.
- Voice dictation : Use speech (instead of a mouse and keyboard) to navigate the web for people with reduced mobility.
12. Use clear, descriptive, and sequential titles
Unstructured web content is overwhelming and unusable for everyone, but especially for people with cognitive disabilities and those who use screen readers. Headlines organize content and guide readers through your site.
What not to do:
- Use title levels only to show visual differences.
- Use title text only to be consistent: make sure it's useful.
To do:
- Use one H1 per page that describes its purpose (or use only several H1 when a page really has more than one objective).
- Combine titles in order (for example, H3 under H2).
Conclusion
Pave the way for equity on the web through good design and assistive technology
Webflow is committed to creating a better and more accessible web, and this effort is based on our collaboration as a community to be attentive to best practices, primarily those of web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG). WebAIM analyzed one million landing pages and discovered that 98% of them had avoidable accessibility barriers.
By integrating accessibility best practices into your design process with Webflow, you contribute to a fairer and more inclusive web. By taking steps today to optimize readability, navigation, and interaction on your site, you are going one step further to ensure that everyone can access and benefit from your content.
