Wix doesn’t have one big “accessibility on” switch. The main tool is the Accessibility Wizard, which you’ll find in the Settings menu of the Wix Editor. You run a scan, work through the fixes it lists, then test the rest by hand, because a scan can only catch some problems. This guide walks you through each step, explains what the wizard can and can’t see, and shows what to check afterwards.
We build and optimise Wix sites every week at Canty Digital in Wollongong, so this is the practical version, not the help-centre version.
TL;DR
- Open your site in the Wix Editor, go to Settings, choose Accessibility Wizard and click Scan My Site.
- The wizard flags things like missing alt text, weak colour contrast and messy heading structure, and walks you to each fix.
- It can’t judge everything. Test with your keyboard alone, check your videos for captions, and try a screen reader.
- Rescan after every round of fixes, then test by hand again.
- Wix settings help, but legal responsibility for your site’s accessibility stays with you as the site owner.
Table of Contents
- Where the accessibility settings live in Wix
- How to run the Accessibility Wizard, step by step
- What the wizard picks up
- What the wizard can’t catch
- Third-party accessibility widgets
- Do Wix settings make you compliant in Australia?
- A simple 30-day plan for a small business site
- What to check after you change settings
- Accessibility and conversions go together
- Perspective
- Need a hand with your Wix site?
- FAQ
- Sources
Where the accessibility settings live in Wix
In the Wix Editor, open the Settings menu and pick Accessibility Wizard. That’s the starting point for almost everything. Wix built it as a guided tool: it scans your pages, lists what it finds, and takes you to the exact element that needs attention.
A few other settings sit around it and matter just as much:
- Site language. Setting this properly helps screen readers pronounce your content correctly. For an Australian business, make sure it’s set to English and not left on a default that doesn’t match your content.
- Heading tags. Wix lets you choose the heading level (H1, H2, H3 and so on) for text elements, separate from how big that text looks.
- Alt text for images. You set this on each image through its settings panel.
- Page names and menus. Clear page names and a consistent menu help everyone find their way.
There is also a keyboard navigation layer built into Wix sites, so visitors can tab through links and buttons. Whether that experience works well still depends on how you’ve laid out your pages.
If you use Wix Studio rather than the classic Editor, the layout of menus differs a little. The same ideas apply: find the accessibility tools in your site’s settings, scan, fix, test. If you can’t spot the wizard where this guide says, search the editor’s settings for “accessibility” and you’ll find the current spot.
How to run the Accessibility Wizard, step by step
- Open your site in the Editor. Log in to Wix and click Edit Site.
- Go to Settings. Choose Accessibility Wizard from the list.
- Click Scan My Site. The tool checks your pages and builds a list of issues.
- Work through the list. Each issue has a Fix button. Click it and the wizard takes you to the element, whether that’s an image, a heading or a block of text.
- Handle the manual items. Some problems can’t be detected automatically. For those, the wizard gives you a checklist of things to look for yourself.
- Rescan. Once you’ve done the fixes, run the scan again to confirm the flagged issues are gone.
- Publish. Changes in the Editor don’t reach your visitors until you publish.
Set aside an hour or two for a small site of five to ten pages. A bigger site, or one with plenty of images, will take longer. Don’t try to do it all in one sitting if you’re short of time. Start with the pages people use most: your home page, your contact page, your booking or checkout flow, and your top services.
That approach lines up with how accessibility specialists suggest handling repairs: fix the high-impact, high-traffic parts first, then work outwards. A site that’s 80% sorted where it counts beats one that’s 100% sorted on pages nobody visits.
What the wizard picks up
The wizard focuses on content problems it can detect automatically. In practice, the common ones are:
- Missing alt text on images. Alt text is a short description that screen readers read aloud. Without it, a blind visitor hears nothing, or just a file name.
- Low colour contrast. Light grey text on a white background looks stylish, but plenty of people can’t read it.
- Heading problems. Duplicate headings, a missing H1, or heading levels that jump around (an H4 straight after an H1, for example).
- Pages without meaningful names. A page called “Page 3” tells a screen reader user nothing.
- Visual indicators. Things like focus outlines, which show a keyboard user where they are on the page.
That’s a useful list, and fixing it will improve your site for everyone. Clear headings and good alt text also help search engines understand your pages, which is one reason accessibility and SEO tend to go hand in hand. If you want to see how that plays out on Wix specifically, our guide to SEO for a Wix website covers the overlap.
Writing alt text that actually helps
The wizard will tell you an image has no alt text. It can’t tell you whether what you typed is any good. A few rules of thumb:
- Describe what the image shows and why it’s there. “Plumber replacing a hot water system in a Wollongong home” beats “plumber” or “IMG_4521”.
- Keep it short. One sentence is plenty.
- Don’t start with “image of” or “photo of”. Screen readers already announce it as an image.
- If the image is purely decorative, such as a divider or background flourish, mark it as decorative rather than stuffing in a description.
- If the image contains text, like a promotional banner, repeat that text in the alt. Better still, put the text on the page as real text.
Fixing contrast without wrecking your branding
Contrast fixes are where owners tend to push back, because brand colours feel fixed. You rarely have to change the whole palette. Often it’s enough to darken the text colour a notch, or put text on a solid background block instead of directly over a photo. Keep your brand colour for logos, buttons with strong text and decorative elements, and use a darker shade for body copy.
Getting your heading structure right
Think of headings as the table of contents for your page. One H1 that names the page. H2s for the main sections. H3s for subsections under those. Don’t pick a heading level because the text looks the right size. Pick it for what it means, then adjust the styling separately. In Wix you can do exactly that, so there’s no need to compromise.
What the wizard can’t catch
An automatic scan is a start, not a verdict. It can tell that an image has alt text, but not whether the text is useful. It can flag low contrast on plain text, but may miss text sitting over a busy photo. It can’t tell whether your menu makes sense or whether a form is a pain to fill in without a mouse.
That’s why Australian government guidance on accessibility testing says to start with automated testing and then always follow up with manual checks. You can use the same approach on a small business site. Here’s the manual round.
1. Keyboard-only test
Put your mouse aside and use the Tab key to move through the page. Check that:
- You can reach every link, button, search box and form field.
- The order makes sense, usually top to bottom and left to right.
- You can always see where the focus is.
- You can open and close menus, pop-ups and lightboxes without a mouse, and you’re not trapped in any of them.
Pop-ups and sliders are the usual culprits. If a cookie banner or promo pop-up grabs focus and you can’t dismiss it with the keyboard, fix that first.
2. Screen reader test
Turn on the screen reader already built into your computer or phone and listen to a couple of key pages. Do headings read in a sensible order? Do buttons say what they do? “Click here” and “Read more” repeated five times tell a listener nothing. Use link text like “See our web design packages” instead.
You won’t become an expert in an afternoon, but even ten minutes of listening to your own site is eye-opening.
3. Video and audio
If you’ve got videos, they need captions, and ideally a transcript. This helps visitors who are deaf or hard of hearing, and also anyone watching on a train with the sound off. Autoplaying video with sound should be avoided, or at least be easy to stop.
4. Text, zoom and mobile
Zoom your browser to 200% and check that nothing overlaps or disappears. Then look at the site on your phone. Tap targets should be big enough to hit with a thumb, and nothing should need pinching and scrolling sideways to read.
5. Forms
Every form field needs a visible label, not just placeholder text that vanishes when someone starts typing. Error messages should say what went wrong and how to fix it. Contact forms are where a lot of enquiries are won or lost, so give yours extra care.
Third-party accessibility widgets
You’ll see apps in the Wix App Market that add a floating accessibility button to your site, letting visitors resize text, switch to high contrast or turn on a reading guide. They can be a handy extra for some visitors.
The catch is that they don’t repair what’s wrong underneath. If an image has no alt text or your headings are out of order, a widget sitting on top doesn’t change that for someone using a screen reader. Treat a widget as an add-on, never as your accessibility plan. Do the wizard and manual work first, and decide afterwards whether a widget adds value for your audience.
Do Wix settings make you compliant in Australia?
No setting makes a site compliant on its own. Wix itself points users to check the guidelines in their own country. Here’s how it looks from an Australian business perspective.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 applies to businesses and organisations broadly, not just government. The widely used technical benchmark is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), and for most organisations Level AA is the target. Government bodies work to a mandatory digital policy built on WCAG 2.2, and it’s sensible for private businesses to aim for the same standard, since it’s the current reference point.
What that means for you:
- The wizard is a good first pass, not a certificate. It covers some WCAG issues, not all.
- You’re responsible for your own content. That includes PDFs, price lists, menus and brochures you upload. A PDF menu that screen readers can’t read is still your problem.
- Keep a record. Note when you scanned, what you fixed and what’s still on the list. If a complaint ever lands, it shows you’ve taken it seriously.
- Get advice for higher-risk situations. If you run a site that serves the public in a regulated field, or you’ve received a complaint, speak to an accessibility specialist or a lawyer who knows disability discrimination law.
For more on this, see our articles on accessibility compliance in corporate web design and accessibility in web design.
A simple 30-day plan for a small business site
If the list above feels long, here’s a realistic way to spread it out.
Week 1: scan and fix the basics. Run the wizard, fix the alt text, headings and page names it flags. Publish.
Week 2: contrast and layout. Work through colour contrast. Check your site at 200% zoom and on a phone.
Week 3: keyboard and forms. Tab through every key page. Fix focus problems, pop-ups and form labels.
Week 4: media, documents and a re-test. Add captions to videos. Review your PDFs. Rescan with the wizard, repeat the keyboard test, and listen to your top pages with a screen reader.
After that, put a reminder in your calendar to rescan every time you make a big change, such as a new page, a redesign or a new booking tool. Accessibility drifts as sites grow, so the best habit is checking small and often.
What to check after you change settings
After each round of fixes:
- Rescan with the wizard and confirm the flagged items are gone.
- Repeat the keyboard-only walk-through on your key pages.
- Spot-check contrast on anything you recoloured.
- Check that the new alt text reads sensibly.
- Confirm videos have captions and that nothing autoplays with sound.
- Test again on your phone.
- Make sure you’ve published, and look at the live site rather than the editor preview.
If you’ve changed page names or URLs along the way, don’t forget redirects so old links don’t break. Our walkthrough on Wix 301 redirects covers how to set those up and test them.
Accessibility and conversions go together
Fixing accessibility isn’t only about avoiding trouble. The same changes that help a screen reader user also help someone reading in bright sunlight on a phone, or someone with a sore wrist who prefers the keyboard. Clear contrast, big buttons, honest link text and tidy forms all reduce friction. Our look at common website UX mistakes that kill conversions shows how many of those mistakes overlap with accessibility failures.
Perspective
We’ve built and fixed a lot of Wix sites over 12 years, and the pattern is consistent: owners run the wizard once, tick off the easy items and assume they’re done. The wizard is a solid tool, and we recommend it, but it only covers the problems a machine can spot.
The sites that do well treat accessibility as part of the design from day one. Headings are planned before the copy goes in. Colours are picked with contrast in mind. Forms are built with real labels. That’s far cheaper than retrofitting, and it’s the way we approach every Wix build, with SEO and AI search compatibility baked in as well, because clear structure helps people, search engines and AI platforms alike.
If you’ve got an existing Wix site that needs a proper audit, we can scan it, fix what the wizard flags, test the rest by hand and tell you in plain English what’s left. No lock-in contracts, and you’ll deal with a local team.
Matthew
Need a hand with your Wix site?
If you’d rather hand this over, our team can build or rework your site with accessibility and SEO in mind. Our Wix web design service starts at A$590 one-off, and ongoing SEO help starts with the SEO Essentials Plan at $170 per month, listed on our SEO Essentials page. Prices are as published on our site when we last checked, so confirm there before you commit.
We’re based in Wollongong and work with businesses across Australia, so a quick chat is easy to arrange.
FAQ
How do I turn on accessibility on my Wix website?
Open the Wix Editor, go to Settings and choose Accessibility Wizard. Click Scan My Site, then use the Fix button beside each issue. Publish your site afterwards so visitors see the changes.
Does the Wix Accessibility Wizard make my site fully accessible?
No. It finds issues it can detect automatically, such as missing alt text, contrast problems and heading errors. You still need to test with a keyboard, check captions and try a screen reader to catch what a scan can’t.
Is my Wix site legally required to be accessible in Australia?
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 applies to businesses as well as government, and WCAG Level AA is the usual benchmark. Wix settings help you get there, but you’re responsible for your own site and content. If you have a specific concern or complaint, speak to an accessibility specialist or a lawyer.
Should I add an accessibility widget to Wix?
A widget can give visitors extra options like larger text or higher contrast, but it doesn’t fix underlying problems. Run the wizard and do your manual testing first, then decide if a widget adds anything for your audience.
How often should I rescan my Wix site?
Rescan after any significant change, like a new page, redesign or new booking tool. Even without changes, a check every few months is a sensible habit.
Sources
- SEO for a Wix website: a comprehensive guide
- Accessibility compliance in corporate web design
- Accessibility in web design: a practical 2026 guide
- Common website UX mistakes that kill conversions in 2026
- Wix 301 redirects: set up in 4 steps