Accessibility, often shortened to a11y, is the practice of designing digital products so that people with disabilities can use them. That covers visitors who are blind and rely on a screen reader, people with low vision, users who cannot operate a mouse, and anyone who is colour-blind or hard of hearing.
Think of a building with a ramp next to the stairs. The ramp does not stop anyone from taking the steps, but it lets someone in a wheelchair get in through the same door. On the web the equivalents are things like text alternatives for images, captions on video, and pages you can fully operate with only a keyboard. Strong contrast between text and background is one of the simplest wins, and accessible navigation makes sure the menu works without a mouse.
The most widely used reference is the WCAG standard, which sets measurable rules at three levels. And the payoff is broad: captions help people in a noisy train, and keyboard support helps power users who never touch a trackpad. So accessibility rarely benefits only one group.
A common trap is treating it as a checklist you run once before launch. Real accessibility is a habit, not a final audit: a single new component with a missing label or a colour swap that drops the contrast can quietly break a page that passed last month. The cheapest time to get it right is while each piece is being built, when a fix is one line instead of a rebuild.
At TopDevs we bake accessibility into the build from the first component instead of bolting it on at the end, which keeps both the cost and the legal risk down.
