Improving site accessibility with inclusive design

Improve your site's usability for people with impairments.

Last updated July 15, 2024

You can customize many aspects of your site to make it more accessible and easier to navigate for all visitors, including those with impairments, or using screen readers, and other assistive technologies.

Use this guide to learn best practices for designing and structuring your content.

Note

This guide is available as a resource to help you get started, but shouldn't be construed or relied upon as legal advice. Squarespace can't provide advice about making your site compliant with any specific accessibility laws, regulations, or standards.

Layout

Creating your website with a clear layout and design is helpful for those with low vision, or cognitive impairments. However, a straightforward and consistent layout can also benefit visitors who aren’t confident with computers, or visitors who are viewing your site on a smaller screen, such as a mobile device. Different parts of your website, such as navigation menus, links, and text sections, should be clearly identifiable.

Keyboard navigation

Some visitors may use a keyboard to navigate your site instead of a mouse. Keyboard accessibility is also important for certain assistive technologies, such as voice recognition and screen readers. You may want to consider testing your site's accessibility by trying to navigate it using only your keyboard. 

Customizing focus outline

While Squarespace sites on version 7.1 have a built-in focus outline feature that highlights items on a page, like navigation links and form fields, the focus outline is standard across all sites and pages. It's not possible to customize the line’s color or thickness. The outline appears when visitors press Tab on their keyboard. The first time you press Tab, a Skip to Content message appears. Press the spacebar to skip the site header and navigation and go directly to the site's content, or continue pressing Tab to navigate to other content.

Note

Ensure that your browser is up to date to avoid any issues with the focus outline feature. Follow these steps to update your browser version.

Squarespace keyboard shortcuts

Learn more about the keyboard shortcuts you can use when managing and editing your site.

Fluid Engine

When editing Fluid Engine sections, keep these best practices in mind:

  • If blocks overlap, ensure the content of all blocks is still visible and usable by visitors.
  • Consider how different block elements might interact. For example, if you have a form block, you may not want to place a button block on top of it, because visitors might be unsure which button is for submitting the form.
  • If you're placing text over other kinds of content, ensure it's readable. This might mean adding a color background to a block, changing the color of text so it stands out on an image, or moving the text to a place where it's still readable. To learn more, see Creating accessible site content.
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  • Get help from our community

  • Get help from our community on advanced customizations.

  • Hire a Squarespace Expert

  • Stand out online with the help of an experienced designer or developer.

Improving site accessibility with inclusive design