If you’re like most advisors we work with, you care deeply about doing what’s right for your clients, but your website doesn’t always show that same story.
Today, your financial advisor website is often the first place someone experiences your brand. Long before they call or book a meeting, they’re quietly asking: Can I understand what this firm does? Do they work with people like me? Does this feel manageable or overwhelming?
That’s where accessibility and inclusion in finance come in. They’re not “nice-to-have extras” or political statements. They’re practical elements of modern website design for advisors that make it easier for real people—especially older adults, caregivers, and clients under stress to actually use your site, understand your process, and feel comfortable taking the next step.
What follows is how accessibility, inclusivity, and strong website design work together to help financial advisors build trust, reduce risk, and attract better-fit clients.
Why Accessibility Really Matters for Advisors
A significant portion of the people you serve may be older, dealing with health issues, caring for family members, or even navigating difficult life events.
A reality of life is a lot of these older clients may live with vision, hearing, cognitive, or mobility challenges. The World Health Organization’s disability fact sheet estimates that 1.3 billion people worldwide—just about 16% of the population—live with some sort of significant disability. In Canada, the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability reports that 27% of adults aged 15 and older—8 million people—have at least one disability that limits daily activities, too.
Now layer that onto your ideal client profile: retirees, pre-retirees, business owners under stress, families supporting aging parents or disabled children. The overlap is huge.
At the same time, the way people choose advisors has shifted. A 2025 Wealthtender study on how Americans find and hire advisors shows that 72% of people planning to hire a financial advisor visit the advisor’s website during their research, and 83% review online reputation through reviews and awards before deciding who to contact. Those findings are summarized in this overview of the Wealthtender 2025 study.
Most prospects will search your name, visit your site, and look you up online before they ever pick up the phone. If your website is tough to read on a mobile device, difficult to navigate with assistive tech, or buried in jargon and PDFs, many of those prospects simply won’t push through. They don’t send an angry email; they just move on.
The result is that an inaccessible or confusing financial advisory website quietly filters out the very people who might benefit most from good advice.
Accessibility as a Growth Strategy, Not Just a Compliance Box
From a marketing perspective, accessibility and good web design are part of the same conversation. When you make your website easier to use, you increase conversion opportunities across the board.
One “clicked-away” visitor isn’t just a lost $50 purchase. It could be a lost household with a six- or seven-figure portfolio and decades of recurring fees. When that person is a widow, caregiver, or retiree already feeling vulnerable, a frustrating online experience can shut the door completely.
There’s also strong evidence that accessible website design improves conversions and SEO. The well-known Legal & General accessibility case study, archived by the W3C documents what happened when the financial services firm rebuilt its site with accessibility in mind: Legal & General nearly doubled the number of visitors completing key actions, increased natural search traffic by 50%, and cut maintenance costs by two-thirds after launching the accessible redesign.
For a financial advisor website, the logic is simple: when more people can comfortably read your content, understand your services, and complete a form, more of them will become clients.
The upside is broader than just your current target market, too. Research from the Centre for Inclusive Design, produced with Adobe and Microsoft in “The Benefit of Designing for Everyone”, explains how designing for people most likely to be excluded—older adults, disabled people, those on low incomes—improves the experience for everyone and can dramatically expand reach and revenue in sectors like financial services.
Inclusive website design for advisors isn’t a “nice to have”; it’s a way to stop leaving money on the table.
Trust, Brand, and the Experience You’re Really Selling
Advisors don’t sell “investments” in the way a store sells shoes. You sell judgment, clarity, and peace of mind—and all of that is built on trust.
Trust starts before the first meeting. When somebody lands on your website, they’re answering questions in their head: do these people get someone like me, can I clearly see what’s going to happen, and does this feel overwhelming or manageable?
If your website feels confusing, cluttered, or inaccessible, it creates friction at exactly the wrong moment. If it’s calm, clear, and welcoming, it reinforces the perception that you’re organized, thoughtful, and client-focused.
This is also where inclusion in finance becomes very concrete.
Regulators and consumer advocates increasingly link accessible communications and digital inclusion with fair treatment of vulnerable customers.
Without turning your site into a legal document, you can show that you’ve thought about people dealing with grief, illness, cognitive decline, or stress—and that they won’t be left behind by your digital experience. That strengthens both your brand and your compliance story.
Reducing Legal and Compliance Risk
There’s a defensive side to accessibility as well. Digital accessibility lawsuits are rising, and financial services are firmly on the radar.
Now, take this with a grain of salt—don’t start worrying too deeply about getting sued, but something to consider…
Accessibility firm AudioEye reports that 8,800 ADA Title III lawsuits were filed in 2024, a 7% increase over 2023, with web and app accessibility a major driver. These trends are discussed in AudioEye’s article on website accessibility in 2025 and its guidance on ADA Title III compliance for private businesses.
The American Bar Association has also emphasized that Title III of the ADA applies to websites and mobile apps. In its Business Law Today piece on digital accessibility under Title III of the ADA, the ABA explains that many courts treat company websites as “public accommodations” and expect them to be accessible to people with disabilities.
For a solo advisor or small firm, one lawsuit can consume years of marketing budget and a lot of energy. Proactively building accessibility into your website design for advisors is a far calmer and more cost-effective way to manage that risk.
Being Inclusive Without Being Political
Many advisors hesitate to talk about inclusion in finance because they don’t want to sound political. The good news is: you don’t have to.
Most accessibility and inclusion comes down to very practical web design decisions. Use body text that older eyes can read without zooming (or relative units that scale up and down based on the user-selected browser fonts size).Choose high-contrast colors so type doesn’t fade into the background. Structure content with clear H1, H2, and H3 headings so both screen readers and humans can scan easily. Make sure every important function—navigation, forms, buttons—works via keyboard alone. Write your main pages in plain, conversational language and briefly define technical terms when they first appear.
You can also let your imagery and examples quietly communicate who is welcome. Photos that show different ages, family structures, and abilities (including visible assistive devices) feel natural when they reflect your real client base. Short case stories about helping a widow, a caregiver, or a family planning for a disabled child say “people like you are welcome here” in a way that feels personal, not partisan.
All of this simply shows that you’ve designed your financial advisor website around the reality of your clients’ lives.
What an Accessible, Client-Friendly Site Feels Like
Imagine a prospective client who has just been referred to you. They’re tired, maybe worried, and they’re looking you up on their phone.
Your homepage loads quickly. The text is easy to read. The navigation clearly shows who you help, what you do, how the relationship works, what it costs, and how to get started.
The language is straightforward and doesn’t make them feel ignorant for not knowing certain terms. They can see right away whether they fit into your niche.
As they scroll, they see examples that sound familiar: retiring alone after a divorce, caring for an aging parent, planning for a child with a disability, navigating a business exit. They start to relax because it sounds like you understand their world.
If they use assistive technology, it works. Headings make sense. Images that matter have descriptions. Forms are simple and clearly labeled. If they watch a video, it has captions. Somewhere on the site, there’s a short note that says you can provide large-print documents, email summaries after meetings, or alternative meeting formats if that would be helpful.
By the time they click “Book a 15-minute call,” they don’t feel like they fought their way into your practice. They feel like you’ve already been thoughtful about their situation. That is accessibility and inclusion in finance in action, brought to life through intentional website design.
Where to Start as an Advisor
You don’t have to rebuild everything overnight. Start by looking at your core pages through the eyes of someone who is older, stressed, or using assistive tech: your homepage, who-we-help page, services or process page, fees, and contact.
Ask yourself whether the text is readable without zooming, whether the navigation is obvious, whether your process and fees are explained in plain language, and whether booking a call feels simple. Then make small, focused improvements to your website design for advisors in those areas.
From there, you can work with a marketing partner who understands web design, accessibility, and the specific needs of financial advisors to build a more complete plan. The goal is not perfection; it’s progress. Every barrier you remove makes it easier for the right people to find you, trust you, and choose you.
As a marketing firm, we see this often: advisors who invest in accessible, inclusive website design aren’t just doing the right thing. They’re building a stronger, more resilient practice that reflects the quality of advice they already deliver.
Need help redesigning or rebuilding your website? Give us a shout! We understand what you need to better support your future and current clientele.
