Most charity leaders assume their website works fine. People visit it, some donate, services get accessed. Job done, right?

Not quite. For every person successfully using your site, there might be two or three who tried and couldn’t. They didn’t complain. They just left.

Through our Impact Optimiser assessments with over 300 charities since 2021, we found that the vast majority had accessibility issues affecting their beneficiaries. These weren’t minor problems - they were barriers preventing people from accessing services, making donations, or finding crisis support.

The thing is, you won't know about most of these issues because the people affected can’t tell you. They’re invisible in your analytics, silent in your feedback, and absent from your success metrics.

This guide helps you find what you’re not seeing.

Why you don’t know you have a problem

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: accessibility barriers are invisible to people who don't experience them.

If you can see your screen clearly, use a mouse easily, and process complex information quickly, your website probably works fine for you. But 2.2 million people in the UK use screen readers. Millions more navigate websites using only a keyboard. Many of your beneficiaries may have cognitive disabilities that make complex navigation overwhelming.

These people don’t typically email to say "your site doesn’t work for me". They just go elsewhere - or worse, they don’t get the support they need at all.

The triggering content problem

Before we get to technical barriers, there’s something more fundamental: the content itself.

We see charities inadvertently creating barriers through imagery and messaging that triggers the exact people they’re trying to help.

A domestic abuse charity showing images of raised fists or someone being struck. An alcohol support service with photographs of beer bottles and drinking. A mental health charity using dark, distressing imagery to "raise awareness".

The intention is usually good - to show the reality of the issue, to create emotional connection. But the effect can be devastating for someone actively experiencing that trauma or addiction.

Someone fleeing abuse doesn’t need to see abuse imagery to know they need help. They need to feel safe accessing that help. Someone in recovery doesn’t need visual reminders of what they're fighting against. They need a clear path to support.

This isn’t about sanitising reality. It's about removing barriers between people in crisis and the help they desperately need.

The donation form problem

In our assessments, donation forms were one of the most common problem areas, with barriers that likely prevented completed transactions.

Common issues we found include:

Forms that can’t be completed using only a keyboard, affecting people who can’t use a mouse.
Error messages that screen readers don’t announce, leaving users confused about what went wrong.
Required fields not properly marked as required, so people submit incomplete forms and get frustrated.
CAPTCHAs with no alternative method, blocking people who can’t see visual puzzles.
Time limits that expire before people can complete the form, particularly affecting anyone who needs longer to process information.
Mobile layouts where buttons overlap or fields don't display properly, making completion nearly impossible on a phone.

Each of these seems small. Together, they add up to abandoned donations you never knew were attempted.

Think about it this way: if your conversion rate is 2%, that might sound reasonable. But what if it should be 4%, and you’re losing half your potential donors to barriers you can't see?

Crisis support pages that don’t work in crisis

This one matters most.

If you provide crisis support - mental health services, domestic abuse help, emergency assistance - your crisis information page needs to work when someone is in genuine distress.

We’ve seen crisis pages that fail catastrophically:

Phone numbers buried in paragraphs of text that screen readers read through slowly, word by word, while someone waits desperately for the number.
Complex navigation that assumes clear thinking when the person using it is in crisis. Information overload that overwhelms someone already struggling to cope.
Mobile layouts where the phone number doesn’t display as a clickable link, forcing someone to manually type it in when their hands are shaking.
Opening hours hidden multiple clicks away when someone needs to know right now if help is available.

Someone in crisis doesn't have time to hunt for a phone number. They don’t have capacity to navigate complex page structures. If they can’t find help immediately, they may not find it at all.

What crisis support should look like

We worked with Safer Places, a domestic abuse charity, to restructure their crisis information. Their help page now emphasises crisis support at the top, with their helpline featured prominently in the header and displayed as a clickable link on mobile.

No hunting. No scrolling. No barriers between someone in danger and the help they need.

The mobile experience gap

Most charity websites get significant mobile traffic, but many aren't truly usable on mobile devices.

Desktop testing misses crucial problems.
Text that's too small to read without zooming, forcing constant pinching and expanding.
Buttons too close together to tap accurately, so you accidentally click the wrong thing.
Forms that require constant zooming and scrolling just to see what you’re filling in.
Navigation that doesn't work with touch, designed for mouse hover that doesn't exist on phones.
Content that disappears off-screen with no way to scroll to it.
Images that take forever to load on slower connections, eating through limited data allowances.

Your analytics might show mobile visitors, but they don’t show mobile visitors who gave up in frustration.

Simple tests you can run today

You don’t need technical expertise to find basic accessibility barriers. Here’s what you can do right now:

The keyboard-only test

Unplug your mouse. Try to navigate your entire website using only the Tab/Shift key and using the Enter key to click links.

Can you access all navigation menus? Fill out and submit your donation form? Find and click your crisis support number? Navigate through your services information?

If you get stuck anywhere, so do people who can’t use a mouse.

The screen reader test

Most devices have built-in screen readers you can use right now.

On Mac or iPhone, it's VoiceOver (Command + F5 on Mac, or in Accessibility settings on iPhone). On Windows, it's Narrator. Both are free and already installed.

For more comprehensive testing, NVDA is a free, open-source screen reader for Windows that many users rely on. JAWS is the most widely-used professional screen reader - they offer a 40-minute trial mode, which is enough time to test your key pages and get a clear picture of the experience.

Turn on your screen reader and close your eyes. Try to find your main phone number, how to make a donation, and how to access your services.

If you can’t find it without looking, neither can people who rely on screen readers.

The mobile reality test

Don’t just resize your browser window. Grab your actual phone and try to make a donation, find opening hours, access crisis support information, or fill out a contact form.

Do it in bright sunlight outside. Do it while holding shopping bags. Do it when you’re tired. That's when people actually use mobile websites.

The cognitive load test

Read your homepage out loud to someone who knows nothing about your charity. Then ask them: what does this organisation do? How would you get help? How would you donate?

If they can’t answer immediately, your content is probably too complex for people experiencing cognitive disabilities, crisis situations, or just general overwhelm.

What to actually look for

Based on our assessments across over 300 charities, here are the patterns that appear most frequently.

Navigation issues typically include menus that don't work without JavaScript, navigation that disappears on mobile, inconsistent menu structures across pages, and no clear path to key actions like donate, get help, or contact.

Form problems usually involve no labels on form fields, error messages that don't explain what’s wrong, required fields not marked clearly, and time-outs on multi-page forms.

Content barriers often manifest as walls of text with no headings or structure, important information hidden in PDFs, jargon without explanations, instructions that assume prior knowledge, and triggering imagery that creates psychological barriers for the exact people you’re trying to help.

Visual design issues commonly include insufficient colour contrast, text over busy background images, links that don't look like links, and buttons that don’t look like buttons.

Why this matters more than you think

Every barrier on your website isn’t just a technical problem - it's a mission failure.

If you exist to support people experiencing mental health crises, and your crisis page doesn't work with screen readers, you're not reaching everyone you’re meant to serve.

If you rely on donations to fund your work, and your donation form can't be completed using only a keyboard, you're leaving money on the table that could fund more services.

If you provide services to vulnerable people, and your website overwhelms people with cognitive disabilities, you’re creating barriers to the support they need.

What to do with what you find

Finding barriers is the first step. The next question is: what do you do about it?

Some fixes are quick. Adding proper labels to form fields, improving colour contrast, making phone numbers clickable on mobile, removing triggering imagery from crisis pages - these can be done in an afternoon.

Others are more involved. Restructuring navigation, redesigning forms, reorganising content - these need planning and proper implementation.

Want to go deeper? We’re running our "A Web for All" webinar in March, where we'll demonstrate live accessibility testing, show you how to interpret what you find, and share insights from our assessments with over 300 charities.

The important thing is to start. Every barrier you remove is someone you can now help, someone who can now donate, someone who can now access your services.

The invisible people who need you

The people affected by accessibility barriers are often the exact people you exist to serve. They’re not abstract statistics - they're your beneficiaries, your donors, your community.

They’re trying to reach you. Make sure they can.

Not sure where to start? Our Impact Optimiser assessment identifies exactly what barriers exist on your website and prioritises them from quick wins to strategic changes.

The hidden barriers audit: what you’re not seeing on your website