To improve, it helps to know where things usually go wrong. The fifth lesson in the “Digital Accessibility Explained” series reviews the most common accessibility issues found across the web—even on visually polished sites.
Some of the most frequent pitfalls include:
Another big category of mistakes lies in the underlying structure. A page can look well organized visually while the HTML doesn’t use proper headings, doesn’t follow a logical order, or creates fully custom interactive components without considering how assistive technologies will handle them. For someone navigating by keyboard or using a screen reader, these choices can turn a “nice-looking” interface into a frustrating obstacle course.
This lesson highlights that most of these issues don’t stem from bad intentions but from a lack of awareness, time, or testing. The upside is that once you know how to spot them, you can often fix them in a targeted way—and avoid repeating them in future projects.
By learning to recognize common accessibility mistakes, you build a valuable reflex: before each design or development decision, you start asking, “Does this actually make access easier for everyone, or am I introducing another barrier?” That question is a key step in making accessibility a standard part of quality, rather than an exception.
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