Taking your own medicine. Practising what we preach. Walking the walk.
We’ve talked a lot about accessibility audits recently, how important they are for meeting the European Accessibility Act (coming / came into effect on 28th June 2025), and how they help SMEs identify issues that affect real users. But here’s the thing: no one is immune to these problems. Not even us.
It is a change that many organisations are still underprepared for, particularly small and medium-sized businesses without in-house accessibility expertise. That is why Brand Ambition and The Coders Guild have come together to offer a practical solution.
But, we couldn’t talk about digital and web accessibility without putting our own websites under a lens. We decided to run the same audit we offer to clients on our own Brand Ambition site, using Sitebulb as our accessibility tool. What we found was equal parts humbling and motivating.
Here’s what the process taught us — and why it led to the decision to rebuild our site from the ground up.
A Quick Refresher: Why Accessibility Matters
The European Accessibility Act will require all businesses that offer digital products or services to EU customers to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. That means:
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Clear navigation that works with a keyboard
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Visual content that screen readers can interpret
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Colours and contrast that support low-vision users
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No reliance on mouse-only actions or inaccessible forms
The logic is simple: your website should work for everyone. But the execution is where most teams struggle and that includes experienced digital agencies.
Sitebulb: What We Used and Why
We used Sitebulb for our audit. It’s a powerful tool we use for all of our free audits in partnership with The Coders Guild. It provides a structured breakdown of accessibility issues based on the WCAG framework.
Strengths:
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Visual reports with prioritised issues
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Clear alignment with EAA and WCAG 2.1 standards
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Integrates SEO and accessibility concerns in a single crawl
Limitations:
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Doesn’t capture manual testing issues like keyboard navigation flow or real screen reader behaviour
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Can flag false positives that still need human interpretation
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Needs a trained eye to translate technical alerts into practical fixes
In short, Sitebulb is a fantastic tool but it’s only as effective as the action you take after reading the results.
Our Audit Results: Not as Perfect as We Hoped
Our overall accessibility score came in at 83. That’s not disastrous, but it’s not where we want to be either.
Here are the key issues flagged:
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Critical: Missing alt text on 42 percent of images
This means screen reader users would get no context or meaning from our visual elements. That’s a major experience blocker. -
Critical: Buttons without discernible text on 41 percent of pages
Users relying on assistive tech would not know where buttons lead, making key interactions inaccessible. -
High: 100 percent of links lacked discernible text
Every link must make sense out of context. Ours did not. For example, “Click here” is meaningless on its own. -
High: Contrast issues on nearly 8 percent of content
Low colour contrast meant some text was harder to read for low-vision users. This affects usability and perception of brand polish.
At first glance, these sound like quick fixes. But we quickly realised the scale and root of the problem.
Breaking Down the Recommendations
Yes, we could go through and patch up each issue. Add alt text here, relabel a few buttons there, tweak colour contrast. But that approach would miss the bigger point.
These issues weren’t just mistakes. They were symptoms of deeper gaps in how we design and build:
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Templates that didn’t prioritise accessibility from the start
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Assumptions about user journeys that didn’t consider non-visual users
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Inconsistent content workflows that left accessibility out of QA
Our internal processes weren’t broken — but they weren’t built with accessibility in mind either. That’s when we had to make a bigger decision.
Our Conclusion: Time to Rebuild
Rather than retrofitting fixes into a structure that wasn’t designed for accessibility, we’ve decided to rebuild our site from scratch.
This time:
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Accessibility will be part of every design, development and content decision
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We’ll use semantic HTML and proper structure as standard
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Contrast, alt text, keyboard navigation, and mobile performance will be tested continuously
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The new site will be audited by a third party for an independent check
It’s not a small job. But it is the right one.
Final Thought
If you’re reading this thinking your site might have the same issues it probably does. And that’s not a criticism. It’s the reality for most teams who built without accessibility in their foundation.
The good news? You don’t have to get everything right overnight.
Start with an audit. Take stock. Decide if you need to fix, rebuild, or train your team. We’re doing all three.
And if you want help getting started, our partnership with The Coders Guild is designed exactly for this. Practical support. No hard sell. Real impact.
Let’s make digital better. For everyone.
