How to Make Your Squarespace Website ADA Compliant (Complete Guide for 2026)
How to Make Your Squarespace Website ADA Compliant
If you’re a designer or business owner using Squarespace, ADA compliance is something you can’t ignore anymore. And not just for legal reasons, but because accessibility simply makes your website better for everyone.
In this guide I’ll walk you through:
what ADA compliance actually means
why a website isn’t automatically compliant
and exactly how to make your website accessible step by step
Let’s keep it practical and simple.
What the heck does ADA compliant even mean?
ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) website compliance means your website is accessible to people with disabilities - including visual, auditory, cognitive and motor impairments.
Website accessibility matters because not everyone uses the internet in the same way. Some people cannot see well and use screen readers that read websites out loud. Some cannot use a mouse and navigate using only a keyboard. Others have hearing difficulties and need captions on videos.
If a website is not accessible, these users may not be able to read the content, navigate pages or use buttons and forms. This means they cannot book your services, buy your products or learn about your business, even if they want to.
Making your website accessible simply means making sure more people can use it easily while also improving the experience for everyone else. Clear fonts, strong contrast, simple navigation and well-structured pages make websites easier to use for all visitors. In many countries accessibility is becoming a legal expectation, not just a nice extra. While not every small business will face legal action, following accessibility best practices protects your business and keeps your website aligned with modern web standards.
Most modern accessibility standards follow WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).
As of 2026:
WCAG 2.2 Level AA is the main standard used for accessibility compliance
Courts often still reference WCAG 2.1 AA in ADA cases as well as EAA
Meeting WCAG Level AA is considered the safest compliance benchmark
(Source: WCAG & accessibility compliance standards)
To meet these guidelines, your website must be:
Perceivable
Operable
Understandable
Robust
This basically means everyone should be able to read, navigate and use your website easily.
Is Squarespace automatically ADA compliant?
Short answer: No.
Squarespace provides a good accessibility foundation, but your site is not automatically compliant. ( No website is )
Accessibility depends on:
how you design your pages
the images and fonts you choose
how you structure content
whether you add alt text, captions and proper navigation
Even though templates can meet basic accessibility standards, the responsibility ultimately falls on the site owner.
(Read directly from the ADA website HERE)
ADA compliance checklist for Squarespace websites
Let’s go through the most important areas to keep an eye on.
1. Add alt text to every image
Alt text describes images for screen readers used by visually impaired users. Without it, they won’t know what your images contain.
Alt text should be short and descriptive, explain the purpose of the image and it should avoid including unnecessary words
Example:
Bad alt text: image1.jpg
Good alt text: Floral wedding table setup with candles and neutral linen
2. Use proper heading structure (H1, H2, H3)
Screen readers rely on headings to navigate pages.
Your site should follow logical structure:
H1 = main page title
H2 = section titles
H3 = subsections
H4 = subtitles
Avoid using headings just to make text bigger (use the text scale feature instead!)
This helps both accessibility and SEO.
3. Fix your color contrast (this is a big one)
Low contrast text is one of the most common accessibility issues.
WCAG requirements:
minimum 4.5:1 contrast for normal text
3:1 for large text
7:1 for AAA accessibility
Light grey text on white is a classic problem. You can make sure to increase contrast by using darker text on light backgrounds, avoiding pastel text over photos and by testing your color combination with the contrast tester tools such as:
WebAIM contrast checker
Coolors contrast tool
4. Make sure text is readable
Accessibility isn’t just about contrast. One of the most important parts of website accessibility is making sure your text is easy to read. If visitors cannot comfortably read your content, they will not stay on your website long enough to understand your offer or take action.
Start with font size. Your body text should generally be at least 16px. Anything smaller can become difficult to read, especially on mobile devices. Many modern websites actually use 17px to 20px body text because it feels more comfortable and luxurious to read. Small text might look elegant, but if visitors need to zoom in to read it, it creates frustration.
Font choice also matters. Decorative or overly thin fonts can be difficult to read, especially in longer paragraphs. Script and handwritten fonts should only be used for accents or short headings, not for main body text. Choose clean, simple fonts for paragraphs and important information so that visitors can quickly understand your content without strain.
Spacing is another key factor. Text that is too tightly spaced feels overwhelming and hard to follow. Make sure you have enough line spacing between sentences and enough space between paragraphs. This allows the eye to move comfortably through the page and helps visitors stay focused on what they are reading.
Keep paragraphs relatively short and easy to scan. Large blocks of text can feel intimidating and difficult to process. Breaking content into smaller sections with clear headings helps visitors find what they need quickly and improves readability for everyone.
Finally, always check how your text looks on mobile. Many readability issues appear on smaller screens. Make sure font sizes remain comfortable, spacing still feels balanced and nothing looks cramped or difficult to read.
5. Add captions to videos
If your website includes videos, adding captions is an important part of accessibility. Captions are the written version of what is being said in a video, and they allow people who are deaf or hard of hearing to understand your content.
From an accessibility standpoint, any video that contains spoken information should include captions. This includes welcome videos, portfolio walkthroughs, educational content, testimonials and promotional videos.
Most video platforms already offer caption tools. If you upload videos through YouTube or Vimeo, you can add captions directly within those platforms.
6. Make navigation simple and clear
Website navigation should be easy to understand and easy to use for every visitor. If people cannot quickly find what they are looking for, they will usually leave the site. For users with disabilities, confusing navigation can make a website completely unusable.
Accessible navigation means that visitors can move through your website without getting lost, confused or stuck. This includes people using screen readers, keyboard navigation, mobile devices or assistive technology.
Best practices:
keep menu simple
use clear page names
avoid hidden navigation
ensure links are obvious and underlined
7. Ensure your site works with keyboard navigation
Not everyone uses a mouse to browse the internet. Some people cannot use a mouse due to mobility or motor impairments and rely entirely on their keyboard to navigate websites. Others use assistive technologies that depend on keyboard navigation to move through content.
Keyboard navigation means a visitor can move through your website using keys such as tab, enter and arrow keys. When a website is accessible, users should be able to open menus, click buttons, fill out forms and move between sections without ever touching a mouse.
This is an important part of ADA and WCAG accessibility guidelines because if a website cannot be used with a keyboard, some visitors may not be able to use it at all.
8. Avoid flashing or auto-playing content
Flashing animations, fast-moving visuals and auto-playing videos can make a website difficult or even unsafe for some visitors. While movement can feel engaging from a design perspective, it should always be used carefully and thoughtfully.
For people with certain neurological conditions, flashing or rapidly moving content can trigger headaches, dizziness or seizures. Even for visitors without medical conditions, too much motion can feel overwhelming and distracting. If someone opens your website and a video immediately starts playing with sound, it can create stress and cause them to leave the page quickly.
From an accessibility standpoint, visitors should always feel in control of what they see and hear on your website.
If you include background videos for visual effect, make sure they do not include sound and are subtle rather than distracting. Important information should never be shared only through an auto-playing video. Always provide the same message in written text somewhere on the page.
Flashing or rapidly blinking content should generally be avoided entirely. Accessibility guidelines recommend avoiding content that flashes more than three times per second, as this can trigger seizures for some individuals.
Subtle movement can still be used in an accessible way. Gentle transitions, soft hover effects and slow animations are usually safe when they do not interfere with readability or navigation. The key is to keep movement minimal and avoid anything that feels sudden or overwhelming.
A good rule to follow is that visitors should always have control. They should be able to start, pause or ignore moving content easily.
9. Use descriptive link text
Link text should clearly explain where the link will take the visitor. This is important for both accessibility and general user experience. When links are vague or unclear, visitors may feel confused about what will happen when they click.
Descriptive link text helps everyone navigate your website more easily, but it is especially important for people using screen readers.
Bad:
Click here
Better:
View wedding portfolio
Download pricing guide
Screen readers often list links separately, so context matters.
10. Run an accessibility audit
Before launching or updating your site, run a test. Accessability Checker is a great tool to check where your website is possibly lacking.
What if my website is not 100% accessible?
First, take a deep breath. Almost no website on the internet is 100% perfectly accessible.
Accessibility is not about achieving perfection. It is about making a reasonable effort to ensure your website is usable for as many people as possible and improving it over time.
Most small business websites, including professionally designed ones, still have minor accessibility issues. What matters is that you are aware of accessibility and actively working to improve your site rather than ignoring it completely.
From both a legal and ethical perspective, effort matters. Many accessibility guidelines and legal discussions focus on whether a business is making a genuine attempt to follow best practices. You are not expected to have a flawless website, but you are expected to avoid major barriers that prevent people from using it.
You can also include an accessibility statement on your website. This is a short page that explains you are working to make your website accessible and provides an email address where visitors can contact you if they experience any difficulty. This shows transparency and willingness to help if someone encounters an issue.
Accessibility of Squarespace Website Builder
Take it from Squarespace themselves and read all about their resources and built-in features here the Accessibility Resources at Squarespace blog post
If you want to dive deeper into comparing accessibility of the platforms I highly recommend reading this blog from Squarestylist where Rache explains the difference between the main website builders and how they perform on accessability scale.
