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The 15-minute check any owner can run

You don't need software to find your site's most dangerous failures. These five tests catch a large share of what demand letters cite, using nothing but your own browser.

1. Unplug your mouse (3 minutes)

Press Tab repeatedly. Can you reach every menu, button, and link? Can you see where you are at each step (a visible outline)? Can you open menus and submit forms with Enter? If you get stuck or lost, so does every keyboard-dependent user, and so does the tester a law firm hires.

2. Right-click your images (3 minutes)

On your key pages, inspect a few important images and look for alt="...". Empty alt on decorative images is correct; empty or missing alt on your menu, product photos, or infographic-style images means screen readers get silence where your content is.

3. Click your form labels (2 minutes)

Click the text label next to each form field ("Email", "Name"). If clicking the label doesn't put your cursor in the field, the label probably isn't attached in code, and a screen reader will announce the field as unnamed.

4. Squint at your text (2 minutes)

Light grey on white, thin text over photos, colored text on colored buttons: if you have to focus to read it, it fails for millions of low-vision users, and contrast is one of the most-cited failures there is.

5. Read your browser tabs (2 minutes)

Open five pages of your site. Does each tab show a distinct, descriptive title, or does every one say the same thing? Titles are how screen reader users know where they are.

What this doesn't cover

Plenty: ARIA misuse, reading order, video captions, focus management in popups, and everything that needs assistive-tech testing. A clean result on these five checks is a good sign, not a clean bill of health. For the full picture, that's what a proper scan is for.