Web standards and accessibility for small sites

Standards-based publishing is mostly a habit. You pick the right element for the job, you keep colours and sizes sane, and you do not add scripts that the page does not need. The benefits are quiet: fewer maintenance surprises, better accessibility, and a page that is more likely to be read on every device that lands on it.

This page covers the practical end of that work for small resource sites. It is not a full standards reference. For that, the W3C's accessibility entry point on web standards is the canonical starting point.

Why standards matter on small sites

Small sites tend to be maintained by one or two people, sometimes part-time, sometimes for years. The hidden cost of an unusual setup is paid every time someone returns to the page and has to remember how it works. Standard markup is cheap to come back to. Custom workarounds are not.

Search engines also have an easier time with predictable structure. The same is true of screen readers and translation tools. The benefit compounds.

Accessibility fundamentals

Five habits cover most of the practical accessibility work on a small resource page:

1. Use semantic elements. <nav>, <main>, <article>, <aside>, <footer> and proper heading levels do real work.
2. Give every image alt text. If the image is purely decorative, use an empty alt="".
3. Keep contrast strong. Pale grey on white reads well to designers and badly to most readers.
4. Make the site keyboard usable. Every interactive element must be reachable and visible when focused.
5. Respect reduced motion. Avoid animations that move on load. Where you must, wrap them in a prefers-reduced-motion query.

Forms - the accessibility surface

Forms are where accessibility usually breaks. Three rules cover most of it:

• every input has a real <label>, not a placeholder pretending to be one
• error messages appear near the field, not in a popup
• field grouping uses <fieldset> and <legend> where it actually groups

Structure that helps both readers and indexers

A page with one <h1>, properly nested headings, descriptive link text and clean lists reads well aloud, looks sensible in a feed reader, and behaves well in search results. There is no separate "SEO markup" exercise. The same structure serves both.

Avoid

• decorative elements that block content on a small screen
• pop-ups that are hard to dismiss
• text that depends on hover to appear
• colour as the only signal of state

Where this fits in the library

• HTML basics for the underlying markup habits.
• Web resources for the broader small-site context.
• The small-site publishing notes at sajt.se-ua.net.

Two-minute checklist

1. Use semantic elements.
2. Alt text on every image.
3. Strong colour contrast.
4. Keyboard reachable.
5. Respect reduced motion.