Your secret weapon for AI discovery: Accessibility

In 2026, the way people find your business online has fundamentally shifted. With AI discovery quickly becoming the standard for search, accessibility has emerged as your secret weapon for ensuring your business remains findable. While traditional search engines are still relevant, more users now rely on AI agents and voice assistants to navigate the web. A surprising side effect of this shift is that accessibility has become one of the most effective ways to ensure your site is discovered by these new technologies.

When you build a website that is accessible to a person using a screen reader, you are essentially building a website that is perfectly optimised for an AI model.

Creating a map for AI agents

AI models and voice assistants do not “see” your website the way a human does. They “crawl” through the underlying code to understand what your business offers. If your site structure is logical and follows accessibility standards, the AI can index your information with much higher accuracy.

• Semantic HTML: Using correct tags for headings, lists, and buttons helps an AI understand the hierarchy of your content. This means when a user asks a voice assistant for a specific service, the AI can confidently point to your site as a reliable source.
• Meaningful labels: Buttons that are clearly labelled for screen readers, such as “Book a table at our London branch” instead of just “Click here,” provide the exact context an AI needs to complete a task for a user.
• Descriptive alt text: Adding descriptions to images allows AI to “read” your visual content. This ensures your brand appears in conversational searches that involve visual descriptions or specific product lookups.

Future-proofing against evolving tech

Technology is changing at a pace that can be difficult for businesses to maintain. However, accessibility standards like WCAG are based on universal design principles that do not go out of style. Investing in these standards helps you stay ahead of the curve.

• Voice search compatibility: About one in five internet users now use voice search regularly. Because voice search relies on speech-to-text technology, it shares the same foundational requirements as many assistive tools. An accessible site is naturally ready for the voice-first era.
• Wearables and smart devices: From smartwatches to augmented reality glasses, new devices often have smaller screens or no screens at all. Accessible sites that rely on clear data and flexible layouts work seamlessly across these diverse platforms.
• Clean data for machine learning: As businesses begin to use their own internal AI tools, having a clean and accessible codebase ensures that your own systems can process your data without errors or “hallucinations” caused by messy formatting.

The performance and SEO crossover

Accessibility often goes hand-in-hand with site performance. Clean code tends to load faster and use less data, which is a key ranking factor for both traditional search engines and AI-driven platforms. By removing the messy code that creates barriers for disabled users, you are also removing the friction that slows down your site for everyone else.

Building with clean architecture

Focussing on accessibility is a practical business decision. It allows you to reach the 16 million people in the UK with access needs while simultaneously making your brand more visible to the AI agents that are increasingly making decisions for your customers. By prioritising a clear and inclusive digital structure, you ensure your business remains findable, functional, and relevant no matter how the technology evolves.

Ensuring your business is findable and functional in this new landscape requires a focus on inclusive design, clean, semantic code and clear, scannable content; we can work with you to audit and refine your site for both human users and AI agents.

Sources:
UK disability statistics: Prevalence and life experiences

Web Almanac: Part II, Chapter 6, Accessibility