Here is a question worth sitting with for a moment. When someone who is blind, or who cannot easily use a mouse, lands on your website to book a ticket, can they actually do it? For a surprising number of arts organisations, the honest answer is no. And that is not only a missed sale. As of 2026, it can also be a legal problem.
I want to talk this week about web accessibility, which is simply the practice of building websites that everyone can use, including people with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive differences. It sounds technical and a little daunting, especially for a small team. It needn’t be. This is mainly for the marketing people and administrators who look after an organisation’s website and ticketing, but the principles apply to a solo artist’s site too.
Why this matters more than you might think
Around one in five people live with some form of disability. Add in the temporary and situational versions we all experience, a broken wrist, bright sunlight on a phone screen, a noisy train, and the number of people who benefit from an accessible site is far higher still. When your website is hard to use for any of them, you are quietly turning away a meaningful slice of your audience before they have heard a single note.
There is a commercial truth here that often gets lost behind the worthy language. Accessible websites tend to be clearer, faster and easier for everyone. The same things that help a screen reader user, such as a logical layout and a booking journey that makes sense, also help the busy promoter checking your site on a phone between meetings. Accessibility is not a tax on good design. It usually is good design.
The law has changed, and it may apply to you
The big shift is the European Accessibility Act, which became applicable across the EU on 28 June 2025. It requires that digital services sold to consumers, including online ticketing and e-commerce, are accessible. We are now a year in, and enforcement is steadily ramping up across member states.
The part many UK organisations miss is this: it can apply even though Britain is outside the EU. If you sell tickets, recordings or anything else to consumers in the EU, you may be caught by it. Very small organisations providing services may fall outside some of the requirements, but I would gently encourage you not to treat that as an excuse. Audience expectations are rising just as fast as the regulations, and “we were technically exempt” is a poor look if someone cannot buy a ticket.
What “accessible” actually means in practice
You do not need to memorise the standards, though if a developer mentions WCAG, that is the internationally recognised benchmark they are working to. What matters is the everyday experience. Here are the things that make the biggest difference, none of which require you to be technical.
- Add alt text to images. A short written description of each meaningful image lets screen readers describe it aloud. A photo of your principal conductor should not read as “image1.jpg”.
- Caption your videos. A large share of people watch with the sound off, and captions are essential for deaf and hard of hearing viewers. They help your reach on social platforms too.
- Check your colour contrast. Pale grey text on a white background may look elegant to a designer, but it can be unreadable for many. There are free tools that check this in seconds.
- Make everything work with a keyboard. Some people navigate without a mouse, using the tab key. Your menus, forms and booking buttons should all work this way.
- Write clear link text. “Book tickets for our Mahler cycle” is far better than “click here”. It helps everyone, and it quietly helps your search ranking.
- Use proper headings and plain language. Structured pages and clear writing help people with cognitive differences, and frankly they help tired humans at the end of a long day.
A simple way to start this week
You do not need a full audit or a big budget to begin. Try this. Open your own website and attempt to buy a ticket using only your keyboard, with the tab and enter keys, no mouse. Then run your homepage through a free online accessibility checker, of which there are several reputable ones, for example WAVE. You will learn an enormous amount in twenty minutes, and you will likely find two or three quick wins you can fix straight away.
A word of caution on the “accessibility widget” plug-ins that promise instant compliance with one line of code. They rarely deliver what they claim, and automated tools only catch a portion of real issues. They are no substitute for thoughtful design and, ideally, testing with real people. Treat accessibility as something you build in, not a sticker you bolt on.
Need a hand with this?
If you would like help understanding where your website stands, fixing the obvious barriers, or building accessibility properly into a new site or ticketing journey, I would be glad to talk it through. At Knight Classical we work across websites, digital marketing and audience development, always with the aim of helping artists and organisations reach the widest possible audience and make every visitor feel welcome. You can reach me directly at martin@knightclassical.com.
