A nonprofit's website is one of its most important ways to connect with people. It's where visitors learn about your mission, look for help, make donations, register for events, apply for programs, and find ways to get involved. For a lot of people, your website is their first connection with your organization, so making it accessible should be part of how you serve your community.
Nonprofit website accessibility helps people with disabilities access the same information, services, and opportunities available to everyone else. It also makes your website easier to use for a wider range of visitors.
Why Nonprofit Website Accessibility Matters
Your website is part of how you serve people. If someone comes to your site looking for assistance, information, or a way to participate in your programs, they need to be able to use the tools and content you've provided.
People access websites in different ways. Some use screen readers that read website content aloud. Others navigate with a keyboard, enlarge text, use voice controls, or rely on other assistive technology. If your website doesn't account for those differences, it can create barriers that keep people from getting the information or services they came for.
A donation form without properly labeled fields can be difficult for a screen reader user to complete. An event registration system that requires a mouse can create a barrier for someone who uses a keyboard to navigate. A scanned PDF could look perfectly clear on screen while remaining unreadable to someone using assistive technology.
These problems are often unintentional, and they're also fairly common. Nonprofit website accessibility helps identify those barriers so they can be fixed.
Accessibility Supports Your Mission
Nonprofits are built around connecting people with services, information, and opportunities. Your website should support that work by giving people a clear path to the information and resources they need.
Someone with a disability should be able to learn about your organization, understand the services you provide, and participate in your programs without running into unnecessary barriers online. For some people, your website is the easiest way to connect with your organization. For others, it could be their main connection.
This matters for nonprofits of every size. A small organization might only have a few pages, but those pages could contain important information for the people it serves. Larger organizations often manage online applications, donation systems, event registrations, resource libraries, and a lot of program information. Either way, accessibility affects how people experience your organization.
Making Your Website Accessible Helps More People Use Your Website
People don't all access the web in the same way, and an accessible website accounts for those differences. Clear headings make pages easier to understand and navigate. Meaningful alternative text helps explain important images. Good color contrast makes content easier to read, and properly labeled forms help visitors understand what information they need to provide.
These are often small details from the perspective of someone building or managing a website, but they can make a real difference in how easily someone can use it.
Improving nonprofit website accessibility gives more people the opportunity to use your website independently. It also helps make sure the information and services you provide online are available to the people who need them.
Donations and Fundraising Depend on an Accessible Experience
Your website can play a big role in fundraising. Someone might arrive after seeing a social media post, receiving an email, or hearing about your organization from a friend. Once they've decided to donate, the process should be easy to complete.
Accessibility problems can get in the way. A screen reader user could have difficulty understanding the donation form. A keyboard user could be unable to reach the payment button. Important instructions could rely only on color, leaving some visitors without the information they need to finish the process.
The same problems can affect volunteer applications, membership forms, event registration, and other ways people interact with your organization online. These are good places to focus during an accessibility review because they're directly tied to the actions your website is asking people to take.
Accessibility Makes Your Website Easier to Use
A lot of accessibility improvements improve the experience for everyone. Clear navigation helps people find information faster, while well-organized headings make longer pages easier to scan. Captions help people watch videos when they can't turn on the sound, and readable text and easy-to-use forms make a website more comfortable to use across different devices.
Good nonprofit website accessibility also encourages thoughtful design. It helps you look closely at how people move through the site and whether they can easily understand what your organization does and take the next step.
That next step could be making a donation, asking for assistance, registering for an event, or getting involved with your work. Removing unnecessary barriers makes those actions easier for more people.
Website Compliance Is Part of the Conversation
Nonprofits should also understand the legal side of website accessibility. Depending on an organization's activities, the services it provides, and whether it receives federal financial assistance, accessibility requirements could arise under laws including the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.
The details can vary, so it's important not to make assumptions based only on the size of your organization or its nonprofit status. If you have specific questions about your legal obligations, qualified legal counsel can help you understand which laws and regulations apply.
From a practical website standpoint, an accessibility review gives you a good place to start. It can show you where barriers exist and help you understand what needs attention.
Common Nonprofit Website Accessibility Problems
Accessibility issues can build up over time as new content is added by different staff members, departments, and outside vendors. A few common examples include:
Online Forms
Donation forms, volunteer applications, contact forms, and program registrations need to work with keyboards and assistive technology. Fields should be clearly labeled, instructions should be easy to understand, and error messages should tell visitors what needs to be corrected.
Images and Graphics
Important images need meaningful alternative text so screen reader users can understand why the image is there. Charts, infographics, and other complex graphics could also need additional text that explains the information they contain.
PDFs & Other Documents
A lot of nonprofits publish annual reports, applications, brochures, meeting materials, and program information as PDFs. A document can look fine visually and still be difficult or impossible for a screen reader to understand, especially if it was created as a scanned image rather than a properly structured document.
Video and Audio
Videos can require captions, while audio content needs transcripts. It's also worth looking at the accessibility of the media player itself, especially when you're using an out-of-the-box solution.
Navigation and Third-Party Tools
Visitors should be able to use menus, links, buttons, and other interactive parts of the website with a keyboard. It's also important to look at third-party services, including donation platforms, event registration tools, and scheduling systems, because they can introduce accessibility barriers even when the main website is in good shape.
How to Improve Nonprofit Website Accessibility
A lot of nonprofits don't know about accessibility problems until someone brings them to their attention. A website can look great and work perfectly for the people who manage it while still creating problems for visitors using assistive technology.
An accessibility audit gives you a clearer picture of how your website performs. Automated tools can find a number of common technical issues, while manual testing helps uncover problems involving keyboard navigation, forms, page structure, and screen reader use.
For nonprofits with larger websites or limited internal resources, an audit can also help you decide where to start. Instead of trying to fix everything at once, you can focus your time and budget on the issues that have the biggest impact on the people using your site.
Keep Accessibility Part of Your Website Process
Websites are always changing. New pages are added, images are uploaded, documents are published, forms are updated, and new features are installed. Without an accessibility process, new barriers can gradually find their way onto the site.
Accessibility works best when it's part of your regular website process. Staff members who publish content should understand the basics of headings, alternative text, links, and accessible documents. Designers and developers should keep accessibility in mind as they create new pages and features.
Regular reviews can catch problems before they build up and make nonprofit website accessibility easier to manage as your website grows.
A More Accessible Website Helps You Serve More People
Your website is an important part of how your nonprofit connects with its community. It gives people a place to find information, access services, support your work, and learn how to get involved.
Making that experience accessible helps more people use your website and participate in what your organization has to offer. It also gives you a better understanding of where barriers exist and what can be improved.
At pondsoup, we help nonprofits identify accessibility issues and create practical plans for fixing them. Our accessibility audits combine automated testing with hands-on review to give you a clear picture of what needs attention and where to begin.
If you're not sure where your nonprofit website stands, an accessibility audit (which pondsoup can provide) is a good first step.
Frequently Asked Questions About Nonprofit Website Accessibility
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