Legibility threshold
Website optimization and accessibility for audiologists
A site an older patient can actually use
Accessibility is not a compliance chore here. It is the conversion rate.
What is included
- WCAG 2.2 AA pass with measured contrast, keyboard paths and captioning
- Call-first design, with tracking that does not break the number for screen readers
- Appointment friction audit, including what your scheduler demands before it lets someone book
- Type and target sizing tuned for a presbyopic reader holding a phone
- Family-path routing, because the person booking is often not the person attending
How it is measured
- Call rate per session, split by device and age-proxy
- Form starts versus completions, by field
- Measured contrast pass rate across every type and ground pair
- Time from landing to booked appointment, including the scheduler
Every engagement starts with the SEO Audit: where your practice can be found today, and the order to fix it in. You keep it whether or not you continue.
- Test
- Legibility threshold
- Reader
- Over 65, on a phone
- Standard
- WCAG 2.2 AA
Set at 14px
Hearing tests, hearing aid fittings and tinnitus care. Call to book, or ask for directions from the car park.
Set at 18px
Hearing tests, hearing aid fittings and tinnitus care. Call to book, or ask for directions from the car park.
Body type
Usually: 14 to 16px
We build to: 17 to 19px, generous line height
Smallest text anywhere
Usually: Footers and form hints below 14px
We build to: A 14px floor, including legal text
Tap targets
Usually: The 24px published floor
We build to: 48px, with real space between them
Contrast
Usually: Judged by eye
We build to: 4.5 to 1, measured on every pair
Forms
Usually: Placeholder text standing in for labels
We build to: Four fields or fewer, labels above
Phone number
Usually: Behind an icon or a chat bubble
We build to: A tappable number, visible without scrolling
| Test | What we usually find | What we build to |
|---|---|---|
| Body type | 14 to 16px | 17 to 19px, generous line height |
| Smallest text anywhere | Footers and form hints below 14px | A 14px floor, including legal text |
| Tap targets | The 24px published floor | 48px, with real space between them |
| Contrast | Judged by eye | 4.5 to 1, measured on every pair |
| Forms | Placeholder text standing in for labels | Four fields or fewer, labels above |
| Phone number | Behind an icon or a chat bubble | A tappable number, visible without scrolling |
Presenting complaint
The median visitor to a hearing practice website is past sixty-five, on a phone, holding it at arm's length, and has the exact sensory impairment the practice treats. Most practice websites are designed by people in their thirties and reviewed in a portfolio.
The one category where accessibility is the conversion rate
Elsewhere, accessibility is argued for on ethical and legal grounds. Here the same fixes are the highest-return conversion work available, because the audience they are for is the entire audience.
That means body copy at seventeen to nineteen pixels, with a hard floor of fourteen everywhere, including the footers and form hints where sites cheat. And contrast measured pair by pair rather than judged by eye: AA is 4.5 to 1 for body text, and most agency palettes fail it somewhere nobody checked.
The phone number is the primary conversion
This audience calls. The number needs to be visible without scrolling, tappable, and written as a number rather than hidden behind an icon. One trap: call-tracking number swaps, done carelessly, replace the number after the page has loaded, so a screen reader can announce one number while the screen shows another.
Targets, forms and motion
- Forty-eight pixel minimum on anything tappable, with real spacing between adjacent targets
- No hover-dependent navigation, because a touch user cannot hover and an unsteady finger triggers the wrong item
- Four fields or fewer, labels above the field rather than inside it as placeholder text
- No auto-advancing carousels, no exit-intent modals, no time-limited interactions
- Captions on every video, corrected rather than auto-generated
Friction past the click
The audit follows the path past the website. If the scheduler demands an account, a date of birth and an insurance ID before it will offer a slot, the fix is usually in the booking configuration rather than on a page.
Questions
Questions about this piece
Is this a website rebuild?
Sometimes, and we will say so in the audit rather than pretending content can save a site that fails for its own audience. Frequently it is a set of fixes to an existing site, which is cheaper and faster and worth exhausting first.
Does this affect our rankings?
Indirectly and genuinely. Core Web Vitals and mobile usability are ranking inputs, and the behavioural signals from a site people can actually use are better. But the argument for doing it is the conversion rate, not the ranking.
What about ADA lawsuits?
Demand letters over inaccessible healthcare websites are common and a WCAG 2.2 AA pass is the practical defence. We are not lawyers and the work is not sold as legal protection, but the overlap is close to total.
This one rarely works alone.
The audit decides which pieces you actually need and in what order. You keep it whether or not you continue.
Works with
- 500 HzTechnical SEOIndexing, speed, structured data and redirects: the plumbing that decides whether good pages are found at all.
- 8 kHzLocal SEO & Google MapsThe three results above the fold when someone types hearing test near me.
- AidedSEO reporting & call trackingSessions are not the product. Booked, kept appointments are.
From the blog
- How to get more patients for your audiology practice: a practical growth guideWhere an independent audiology practice loses new patients (visibility, interest, booking or attendance) and how to fix the stage that costs you the most.
- Designing a hearing practice website for a seventy-year-oldThe one audience where accessibility work and conversion work are the same work.