How to Create Accessible Marketing Graphics for Your Website

Why Accessibility Matters in Marketing Graphics

Marketing graphics play an important role in how businesses communicate online. From promotional banners and infographics to website images and digital advertisements, visuals can help capture attention, explain information, and encourage visitors to take action.

However, a graphic that looks attractive isn't necessarily easy for everyone to understand. Poor colour contrast, small text, complicated layouts, and missing image descriptions can create barriers for people with visual impairments or other accessibility needs.

These issues can also affect visitors who are browsing on smaller screens, viewing content in bright sunlight, or simply trying to find information quickly.

Creating accessible marketing graphics doesn't mean abandoning creativity or limiting your brand's visual identity. It means making thoughtful design decisions that allow more people to engage with your content. By considering accessibility throughout the design process, businesses can create graphics that are both visually appealing and easier to use.

Start With the Right Colour Contrast

Colour is one of the most noticeable elements of any marketing graphic. It helps establish brand identity, draw attention to important information, and create visual interest. However, certain colour combinations can make text difficult to read.

For example, light grey text on a white background might appear modern and minimal, but the lack of contrast can make it challenging for some visitors to distinguish individual letters. Similar problems occur when text is placed over busy photographs or backgrounds containing multiple colours.

Accessibility guidelines generally recommend a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for regular text and 3:1 for large text. These ratios help designers determine whether text stands out sufficiently from its background.

Businesses don't necessarily need to change their brand colours to meet these guidelines. Instead, they can adjust how those colours are used. A lighter brand colour might work well as a background, for instance, while a darker variation provides better contrast for text.

Using contrast-checking tools during the design process can help identify combinations that look attractive but may be difficult to read. Making these adjustments early is often easier than redesigning graphics after they've been published.

Choose Typography That Is Easy to Read

Typography influences how quickly and comfortably visitors can understand a marketing message. While decorative fonts can add personality, they aren't always suitable for important information.

For most marketing graphics, readability should take priority over elaborate styling. Clear fonts, appropriate text sizes, and sufficient spacing make it easier for visitors to understand the message without unnecessary effort.

Visual hierarchy is equally important. A promotional graphic might include a headline, supporting information, and a call to action. Each element should have a clear role, with the most important information receiving the greatest visual emphasis.

Designers can create this hierarchy through differences in font size, weight, spacing, and positioning rather than relying on multiple decorative typefaces.

It's also important to consider how graphics appear on different devices. Text that looks perfectly readable on a large desktop monitor can become extremely small when the same image is displayed on a smartphone.

Before publishing, businesses should review their graphics at the sizes visitors are likely to encounter. A slightly simpler design with larger, clearer text is often more effective than a detailed graphic that becomes difficult to read on mobile devices.

Make Graphics Understandable Without Relying on Colour

Colour can communicate meaning quickly, but it shouldn't be the only way important information is presented.

Consider a comparison chart that uses green to indicate positive results and red to indicate negative ones. Someone with a colour vision deficiency may struggle to distinguish the categories if colour is the only difference between them.

A more accessible approach would include additional indicators such as labels, symbols, patterns, or different shapes.

This principle applies to many types of marketing graphics. Pricing comparisons can use checkmarks alongside highlighted features, while performance charts can include direct labels instead of relying entirely on coloured legends.

These additional visual cues don't need to make a design more complicated. When implemented thoughtfully, they can improve clarity and make information easier for everyone to understand.

The goal is to ensure that the message remains understandable even when colour differences aren't immediately apparent.

Keep Important Information Out of Images When Possible

Many websites use graphics that contain headlines, promotional messages, pricing information, or calls to action. Although embedding text directly into an image can provide greater control over its appearance, it can also create accessibility challenges.

Unlike regular website text, words embedded inside an image generally can't be independently resized, selected, or customized by visitors. The text may also become unreadable when the image is scaled down for smaller screens.

For example, a promotional banner containing several paragraphs might look attractive on desktop but become difficult to read when compressed into a mobile layout.

Whenever possible, businesses should consider placing important text directly on the website rather than including it as part of an image. This allows the content to respond more naturally to different screen sizes and user preferences.

Graphics can still provide visual interest through backgrounds, illustrations, photographs, and decorative elements without carrying all the essential information themselves.

There are situations where text inside images makes sense, such as logos or graphics where a particular visual presentation is essential. However, important marketing messages should remain accessible regardless of how they're presented.

Make Infographics and Complex Visuals Easier to Understand

Infographics are useful for presenting statistics, comparisons, processes, and other information that might be difficult to explain through text alone.

However, adding too much information to a single graphic can make it harder to understand rather than more helpful.

An infographic filled with small labels, decorative icons, overlapping elements, and multiple charts may overwhelm visitors before they can identify the main message.

A better approach is to organize information into clear sections with descriptive headings and a logical reading order. Each section should communicate one main idea before moving to the next.

Spacing also plays an important role. Giving individual elements room to breathe helps visitors distinguish between related information and understand how different parts of the graphic connect.

For charts and data visualizations, labels should clearly identify what the information represents. Businesses should also consider whether the underlying data needs to be explained in accompanying text.

Complex graphics may require a written summary or detailed description so visitors who cannot interpret the visual presentation can still access the information.

Ultimately, an effective infographic should make information easier to understand, not require additional effort to decode.

Consider Accessibility When Publishing Graphics on Your Website

Creating an accessible graphic is only one part of the process. How that graphic is incorporated into a website can also influence whether visitors can understand and interact with it.

One important consideration is alternative text, commonly called alt text. This provides a text alternative for images, helping people using screen readers understand information that would otherwise be communicated visually.

Effective alt text should describe the meaningful purpose or content of an image rather than simply listing every visible detail.

For example, a marketing graphic comparing three service packages might need alternative text explaining the comparison. A decorative background that adds no meaningful information generally doesn't require a descriptive alternative.

The surrounding website content matters as well. If a complex graphic communicates information that isn't explained elsewhere on the page, some visitors may miss important details.

Businesses should therefore consider accessibility as part of the entire publishing process, not just the individual graphic. Reviewing elements such as image descriptions, keyboard navigation, responsive layouts, and content structure can reveal issues that may otherwise go unnoticed. Following a WordPress accessibility checklist can help identify additional barriers and support a more accessible experience across the website.

By considering how visuals interact with the rest of a page, businesses can make their marketing content more useful to a wider audience.

Test Your Graphics Before Publishing

Even carefully designed graphics can develop accessibility problems when viewed in different environments.

A graphic might look excellent inside a design editor but become difficult to read after being uploaded to a website, resized for mobile, or displayed against a different background.

Testing should therefore be a regular part of the publishing process.

Start by reviewing graphics on desktop and mobile devices. Check whether text remains readable, important details are visible, and the layout still communicates the intended message.

Contrast-checking tools can help identify colour combinations that may be difficult to distinguish. Businesses should also review whether essential information can be understood without relying on colour alone.

For graphics containing charts or detailed information, consider whether someone could understand the main message through the accompanying text or image description.

Automated tools can identify some accessibility issues, but they can't evaluate every aspect of a design. Manual reviews and feedback from people who use assistive technologies can reveal problems that automated checks miss.

Testing doesn't need to be complicated to provide value. Building a few accessibility checks into the regular design and publishing workflow can prevent common problems before visitors encounter them.

Creating Better Graphics Through Accessible Design

Accessible marketing graphics aren't necessarily simpler, less creative, or less visually appealing. In many cases, the same design principles that support accessibility also contribute to clearer and more effective communication.

Strong contrast, readable typography, thoughtful visual hierarchy, and organized layouts can make graphics easier to understand for a much wider audience.

Businesses should also remember that accessibility extends beyond the design itself. How graphics are published, described, and displayed across different devices influences the experience visitors have with the content.

Rather than treating accessibility as a final adjustment, incorporating it from the beginning can help businesses create more consistent and effective marketing materials.

The result is visual content that not only looks professional but also communicates its message clearly to more of the people it's intended to reach.