Site123 is a website building and hosting platform. It offers both free and paid website building and hosting packages for individuals and small businesses that want to set up a web presence in a hurry.
Site123’s promise of ‘no designing or coding skills’ definitely does not take web accessibility into consideration. Site123 has no built-in accessibility elements and, because it’s such a simple website builder, there’s no way to edit the HTML source code. This means that you can’t add ARIA attributes, alt tags, or make other code-level adjustments in order for your Site123 website to support assistive technology like screen readers or to enable keyboard navigability.
Supporting screen reader compatibility and enabling keyboard navigation alone make up about 80% of the WCAG 2.1 AA, or web content accessibility guidelines, which are the most widely adopted and updated guidelines for accessible websites. Needless to say, without these elements your website is not accessible.
The only option that Site123 users have is to download their free web accessibility plugin. Don’t be misled by these plugins because web accessibility is so much more than a few design adjustments and is simply not something that can be done for free.
At best, a free plugin will offer some design features that make your website disability-friendly, such as enlarged text and better color contrasts, which cover only 20% of the WCAG. Achieving screen-reader compliance and keyboard navigation requires top-notch special attention and expertise and are typically not achieved with free web accessibility plugins.
