"Can a Wix site be made accessible?" is one of the most common questions, and the honest answer is: partly — and it depends exactly on what.
The trouble with most answers you'll find is that they were written by someone selling a plugin. Here's an answer that starts from the right question.
The real question: how much control you have over the code.
IS 5568 at level AA asks for four things — contrast, keyboard navigation, correct semantics and alternative text. All four are properties of the HTML.
From which one simple rule follows: the more access a platform gives you to the HTML, the more of the standard you can reach. That's the whole difference between platforms. Not quality, not price — access.
Wix — what you can and can't.
What's usually possible:
- Changing colours and fixing contrast
- Adding alternative text to images
- Setting heading hierarchy through the text styles
- Making sure forms have labels
Where you hit the ceiling:
- Keyboard focus order derives from the structure the platform generates, and doesn't always match the visual order
- Prebuilt components — galleries, carousels, popups — arrive with their own semantics, and you can't rewrite them
- Third-party apps inject code you don't control
The important point: Wix has an accessibility wizard, and it helps. It scans and flags issues. It doesn't make the site conformant, and it doesn't claim to.
WordPress — more control, more responsibility.
On WordPress you can edit templates, change HTML and fix almost anything. The ceiling is far higher.
But the control moves to you, and so do the problems:
- The theme decides a lot. A theme built without regard for accessibility produces broken semantics on every page, and spot fixes won't help.
- Every plugin adds its own HTML. A site with 20 plugins has 20 potential sources of trouble.
- A theme update can wipe out fixes that weren't made in a child theme.
In practice: a WordPress site on a decent theme reaches the standard without drama. A site on an old theme with twenty plugins is sometimes better rebuilt.
The plugin that promises compliance in one click.
On both platforms you'll find the same product: a plugin or app for a few hundred shekels a year, promising "full legal compliance".
It's the same widget. It's a layer over the site, not a change to the site. It adds a floating button that resizes text and switches contrast, and that's a genuine convenience with real value.
It doesn't touch semantics, doesn't fix focus order and doesn't add alternative text to images. The standard is about the code. The widget isn't there.
If someone is selling you "meets all accessibility law" for a small annual fee, ask one question: does this product change the site's HTML, or add a layer on top of it? The answer explains everything.
When to retrofit and when to rebuild.
There's no formula, but there's a rule of thumb that holds:
- Young site, modern theme, few plugins → retrofit. Cheap, quick, sensible.
- Older site, unmaintained theme, lots of prebuilt components → price both. Sometimes the retrofit approaches the cost of a new site, and then you're paying full price to keep an old one.
The right question isn't "what does a retrofit cost". It's "what does a retrofit cost, versus a site built accessible from the start" — because on a new build, accessibility adds almost nothing.
How to check it yourself in ten minutes.
Before you pay anyone, you can get a reasonable picture:
- Unplug the mouse. Try to get through the whole site with Tab alone — menu, form, submit button. If you get stuck, you've found a defect.
- Check you can see where you are. Every Tab press should visibly mark the active element.
- Zoom text to 200% in the browser. If something clips or disappears, that's a problem.
- Inspect one image. Right click, view the code, and see whether there's real alternative text rather than a filename.
- Scroll to the footer. Is there an accessibility statement? Is it on its own page?
These five checks don't replace a professional audit, but if you failed two of them, you already have your answer — and you know the widget didn't solve it.