This October we looked at 64 electrician websites in West Michigan and the Chicago area. We checked two things: how well each site is set up for search, and how well it works for every visitor, including people with disabilities.
The search results were good news. The accessibility results were not. The typical electrician site scored 82 out of 100 for search but only 64 out of 100 for accessibility.
Here is what we found, what accessibility actually means, and why it should matter to anyone who gets work through their website.
What we found
For search, most electrician sites in our region have the basics in place. The typical score was 82. Only 11 sites scored under 70, and 5 reached 90 or above.
Accessibility tells a different story. We were able to check 59 of the sites, and 38 of them scored under 70. That is nearly two in three. The typical score was 64.
So the same sites that Google can read reasonably well are often hard for a real person to use. A good search score gets a visitor to your site. It does not mean they can get from your homepage to a phone call.
What “website accessibility” means
An accessible website is one that people can use however they get around the web. That includes:
- People who are blind or have low vision, who use a screen reader that reads the page out loud, or who zoom the page way up to read it.
- People with color blindness, who can miss a button or a link that only stands out by its color.
- People who can’t use a mouse or a touchscreen easily, because of arthritis, a tremor or an injury, and who move through a page with the keyboard instead.
- People who are deaf or hard of hearing, who need captions on any video that explains your work.
It also includes everyone else on a bad day. Think of someone reading your site on a phone in bright sunlight, on a cracked screen, or with one hand while the other holds a flashlight in a dark basement. A site that works for a screen reader user usually works better for that person too.
There is a published standard for all of this, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Version 2.1 at level AA is the one most website accessibility complaints point to. It covers things like text contrast, labels on form fields, descriptions for images, and whether every link and button can be reached without a mouse.
Why it matters for an electrician
It decides whether the call happens
Most people land on an electrician’s website for one reason: to call or to ask for a quote. If the phone number is an image a screen reader can’t read, if the “Call now” button can’t be reached with a keyboard, or if the quote form has fields with no labels, that visitor can’t finish what they came to do. They don’t send you a note about it. They go back to the search results and call the next electrician on the list.
Your customers are the people these problems hit first
A lot of electrical work is for homeowners, and many of them are older. Eyesight changes with age, and small, light-gray text on a white background gets harder to read every year. Fine motor control changes too, which makes tiny buttons and links harder to tap. A site that is hard to read or tap turns away exactly the customers who are most likely to hire someone rather than do the job themselves.
There is legal risk
The Americans with Disabilities Act covers businesses that serve the public, and courts and plaintiffs have applied it to websites. Small businesses, contractors included, regularly receive demand letters and lawsuits over inaccessible websites, often from firms that file many at once using automated scans. We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. But fixing the common problems is almost always cheaper and faster than responding to a letter, and it is far easier to do on your own schedule than on a deadline.
It helps search and AI assistants read your site
Much of what a screen reader needs, search engines and AI assistants need too: real text instead of text baked into images, descriptions on photos, clear headings, and labeled forms. When someone asks an AI assistant to recommend an electrician nearby, a site that is easy for a machine to read is easier to describe correctly. Accessibility work tends to pay off in more than one place.
It reflects on your work
Electricians sell safety and doing things to code. A website that quietly fails the basic standard for its own industry doesn’t send that message. A site that works for everyone does.
Why good search scores don’t cover this
Search checks look at things like page titles, descriptions, speed and links. Accessibility checks look at how a person actually uses the page: can they read it, reach it and fill it in? A site can do well on the first and poorly on the second, which is exactly what we saw in our region this month.
Five things you can check yourself in ten minutes
- Use the keyboard. On a computer, open your homepage and press the Tab key repeatedly. You should see a visible outline move through the links and buttons in a sensible order, and you should be able to reach your phone number and your quote form. If the outline disappears or skips your main buttons, keyboard users are stuck.
- Zoom in. On your phone, pinch to zoom your homepage to about twice its size, or on a computer press Ctrl and the plus key a few times. The text should get bigger without overlapping or running off the screen.
- Read it outside. Look at your site on your phone in daylight. Light-gray text, text over a busy photo and pale buttons are hard to read for everyone and impossible for some people.
- Look at your contact form. Every field should have a label that stays visible while someone types. If the only hint is gray text inside the box that disappears when they start typing, people lose track of what goes where.
- Check your phone number. It should be real text that you can tap to call, not part of a picture. Try selecting it with your finger. If you can’t, a screen reader can’t read it either.
What fixing it usually involves
For most small business sites, the fixes are not a rebuild. They are things like adjusting colors, adding labels to form fields, writing short descriptions for photos, making the phone number real text and making menus and buttons work with a keyboard. Many problems come from the theme or template, so one fix often clears the same issue on every page.
If you would like a hand with your own site, send us a note using the form below. Tell us a little about your business and we will take it from there.