Campaign website accessibility: reach every voter

Picture the voters you're trying to reach. A retired couple reading your site on a tablet at the kitchen table, glasses pushed up on their foreheads. A shift worker scrolling on a cracked phone in a parking lot at noon. A neighbor who uses a screen reader. A dad watching your video in a waiting room with the sound off.

Every one of them is a voter. An accessible campaign website is simply one all of them can use. Most of it isn't technical. It comes down to choices about text, color, pictures and words that cost nothing to get right.

Why it reaches more voters

Local elections are often decided by people who vote in every election, and many of them are older. Eyesight changes with age. Small, faint text that looks sleek to a 28-year-old designer can be unreadable to the people most likely to show up at the polls.

Accessibility also helps people with no disability at all. Strong contrast helps anyone reading a phone in bright sunlight while knocking doors. Captions help anyone watching with the sound off. Plain language helps anyone reading quickly between other things. When you build for readers with low vision, you build a better site for everybody.

The W3C's Easy Checks are a good first review you can do yourself, and ADA.gov's Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA explains common barriers in plain terms. This guide isn't legal advice; whether specific rules apply to your campaign is a question for your own counsel.

Readable text and strong contrast

This is the single biggest fix on most campaign sites.

• Body text is large enough to read on a phone without zooming. Err on the side of bigger.
• Text is dark on a light background (or light on dark) with strong contrast. Avoid light gray on white.
• No important words placed over a busy photo. If you put your slogan over a picture, add a solid or dark overlay behind it.
• The page still works when someone zooms in or turns up their phone's text size. Nothing gets cut off or overlaps.
• Lines aren't too long on a desktop screen, and there's space between paragraphs.
• Color is never the only signal. "Required fields in red" doesn't help someone who can't tell red from green; add a word or a symbol.

Campaign colors are a common trap. Your sign might be pale yellow on white, and that's fine on a yard sign at arm's length. On a phone screen it disappears. Use your colors for accents and buttons, and keep body text dark and plain.

Alt text for photos and graphics

Alt text is a short written description of an image that screen readers read aloud, and it shows up if the image fails to load on a slow connection. Every meaningful image needs it.

• Your headshot: "Jane Smith, candidate for Lakeview County Council District 3." Not "headshot.jpg."
• An event photo: "Jane talking with residents at the Pine Street fire station community meeting."
• A graphic with words in it: the alt text should include the words. If your "Vote by November 7" graphic has no alt text, a screen reader user never learns the date.
• A purely decorative image (a background texture, a divider line) should have empty alt text so screen readers skip it.

Better still, don't put important information only inside an image. Put dates, deadlines and your polling-place links in real text on the page. Our guide to campaign photos on a budget covers getting the photos themselves right.

Captions on video

A short video of you explaining why you're running can be the most persuasive thing on your site. It's useless to anyone who can't hear it or is watching muted, which on phones is most people.

Add captions to every video. Most video platforms generate automatic captions; review and correct them, because they get local names wrong all the time. Your county's name, your street names and your own name are exactly the words auto-captions miss. If a video carries important information, such as a candidate statement, put a short text summary on the page below it as well.

Keyboard navigation and link text

Some people can't use a mouse or a touchscreen and get around with a keyboard or other device. Try this on your own site: put the mouse away and press the Tab key repeatedly.

• You can reach every link, button and menu item, in a sensible order.
• You can always see where you are (a visible outline or highlight on the focused item).
• Menus open and close with the keyboard, and you don't get stuck inside a pop-up.
• Forms (volunteer sign-up, email list) can be filled and submitted without a mouse, and each field has a visible label.

Link text matters too. Screen reader users often pull up a list of all the links on a page. A list of "click here, click here, read more, here" tells them nothing. Write links that make sense on their own: "Read my plan for Highway 52 traffic," "See the March 10 council minutes," "Sign up to volunteer."

Pages, not PDFs

Campaigns love PDFs: the platform brochure, the scanned endorsement letter, the county budget. PDFs are often hard to read on a phone, frequently don't work with screen readers (especially scans), and don't resize when someone zooms in.

Put your own content on regular web pages. Your platform belongs on issue pages, not in a brochure PDF. If you're citing a government document, link to it on the government site, and quote the key line in text on your page so voters don't have to open a 90-page file on a phone to find one sentence.

If you do offer a printable flyer as a PDF, make sure everything in it also appears on a page.

Plain language

Accessibility includes the words. Many voters read quickly, read in a second language, or simply don't speak government. Plain language helps all of them.

• Use short sentences and short paragraphs.
• Use real headings that say what's in each section, so people can skim.
• Explain terms like "millage," "impact fee," "variance" or "first reading" the first time you use them.
• Say the specific thing. "Fix the drainage on Oak Hollow Drive" beats "infrastructure resilience."
• Spell out abbreviations once: South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT).

If a big share of your district speaks Spanish, a Spanish version of your key pages reaches voters who might otherwise skip your site. We offer it as a $200 add-on on any package.

How we build it in

Every CandidateLaunch site starts from a template built for readability: large text, strong contrast, real headings, keyboard-friendly menus and descriptive links. We build for readers with low vision, and we hold the content we place to the same standard, writing alt text for your photos and putting your platform on pages instead of PDFs.

You can see it in action on our demo site. Turn up your phone's text size and take a look, or read how it works and get started.

Common questions

Does my campaign website have to be accessible by law?

Rules depend on who you are and where you are, and this is not legal advice. Whatever the legal answer, an accessible site reaches more voters, so it is worth doing. ADA.gov has general guidance on web accessibility.

What is the quickest accessibility fix for a campaign site?

Make the body text larger and darker. Many campaign sites use small, light gray text on white, which is hard to read on a phone outdoors and for anyone with low vision.

Should I post my platform as a PDF?

Put it on a regular web page instead. Pages resize on phones, work with screen readers and show up in search. If you must share a PDF, also put the key content on a page.

Are CandidateLaunch sites built to be accessible?

Yes. Our template uses large readable text, strong contrast, real headings, keyboard-friendly navigation and descriptive links. We build for readers with low vision, and we check the content we place on your site too.