Accessibility on Your Restaurant Website: WCAG Issues and How to Fix Them

Picture a guest who is visually impaired, using a screen reader to check your site for a gluten-free dish. Or an older guest trying to read your menu on their phone, stuck on grey 10-pixel text against a light grey background. Both leave, not because your food is wrong, but because your website got in the way. That’s what accessibility is about: a site that everyone can use, regardless of disability, age or the device someone is looking at it on.

What does accessibility mean for a restaurant website?

Accessibility centres on the international WCAG guidelines (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). That sounds technical, but it comes down to four simple questions: can everyone perceive your content (enough contrast, alt text on images), can everyone operate your site (even with just a keyboard, even with shaky hands on a small screen), is your content understandable (clear language, a logical structure), and is the underlying technology robust enough to work with tools like a screen reader.

For a restaurant, hotel or campsite, this isn’t an abstract concern. Your guests are a cross-section of society: older guests, guests with a visual or motor impairment, guests trying to read your site on a tiny phone screen in bright sunlight. An accessible site works just as well for all of them as it does for everyone else.

Is it a legal requirement too?

Accessibility is no longer just a matter of good manners. Since June 2025, the European Accessibility Act has set requirements for websites of businesses offering certain services online, such as online bookings, online ordering or a webshop. Many restaurants, hotels and campsites now fall under it, precisely because booking and ordering happen online by default these days.

There’s no need to panic: it mostly comes down to a handful of practical basics, and most of them are fixed with small adjustments. Don’t see it as a threat of fines, but as a good reason to improve something that belongs in a pleasant website anyway.

The most common issues on restaurant websites

In practice, the same kinds of problems show up again and again:

• Too little contrast: light grey text on a white background may look stylish, but is barely readable for many guests.
• Missing alt text: photos of dishes without a description are invisible, and therefore meaningless, to a screen reader.
• A menu as a PDF or photo: a scanned menu can’t be read aloud by a screen reader, no matter how sharp the photo is.
• Unclear headings and structure: without a logical H1/H2 setup, an assistive tool has no way of knowing what the main points of a page are.
• Tiny click targets: a minuscule close button or arrow is hard to hit on mobile for anyone, and near impossible for guests with motor impairments.
• Forms without clear labels: a booking form where a screen reader can’t tell which field is for what.

Step by step: making your site more accessible

You don’t need to fix this in one afternoon. Just work through the list from top to bottom:

1. Replace your PDF or photo menu with a real online menu. A digital menu is searchable and can be read aloud, a PDF can’t.
2. Add alt text to all your photos. Go through your photo gallery and menu photos, or let the SEO checklist fill in the missing alt text for you in one go.
3. Check the colour contrast in your house style. In your house style, choose text colours that stand out clearly against the background, especially on buttons and menu prices.
4. Make sure every page has a logical heading structure. One H1 per page, with tidy H2s and H3s underneath, without skipping levels.
5. Test your site with the keyboard. Can you tab through your menu, form and booking widget without a mouse? If not, that’s a signal for your developer or platform.
6. Label your form fields. Every field in your contact or booking form should make clear what belongs in it, even for someone who can’t see the screen.
7. Run a free accessibility check. Tools like WAVE or the Lighthouse audit in Chrome show the biggest issues in a matter of seconds.

What Sitebite already handles for you

Some of this work you don’t have to do yourself at Sitebite. Templates are built with readable text sizes and sufficient contrast, headings follow a logical structure automatically, and your site is responsive and keyboard-operable by default. Put your menu online instead of as a PDF, and it’s readable aloud right away. Run the SEO checklist, and you pick up missing alt text in the same pass, which helps both your visibility and your accessibility. A fast site matters here too: slow pages frustrate exactly the guests who already have to work harder to use your site, so page speed and accessibility go hand in hand.

Frequently asked questions

Does my restaurant website have to fully comply with WCAG?

For most hospitality businesses, it comes down to a reasonable effort on the key points: contrast, alt text, an operable menu and clear forms. You don’t need to score perfectly on every detail of the guideline to already serve many guests better.

Does this take a lot of time?

No. Most issues are fixed with a handful of adjustments: digitising a menu, filling in alt text and checking your colours. That’s usually an hour’s work, not a rebuild of your site.

Does accessibility help with SEO too?

Yes. Alt text, clear headings and a searchable menu are exactly the things Google and AI assistants also need to understand your site. Accessibility and visibility pull on the same end of the rope here.

Want to see at a glance where your site is still falling short? Try Sitebite for free and check your site for accessibility and SEO at the same time.