Where they started
Northgate run three practices and had one website that served none of them properly. The accessibility audit we ran in week one found body text at 2.9:1 contrast, six unlabelled form fields, a cookie banner that couldn't be dismissed with a keyboard, and a treatment menu that trapped focus once opened.
For a healthcare provider that's a legal exposure as well as a usability failure. It's also self-defeating: a dental patient base skews older and includes people with low vision and motor impairments, which is precisely the audience the site was excluding.
The copy was written in clinical language. Their page for what patients call "a cracked tooth" was titled "Restorative Indirect Restorations" and ranked for nothing, because nobody searches that.
And there was no booking. A form promised a callback within two working days. Reception logged roughly 190 calls a week, and the practice manager estimated three quarters were hours, pricing, insurance coverage, or appointment requests.
What we built
Accessibility was the constraint we designed inside rather than a checklist at the end. Every colour pair was computed before it went in the palette, every interactive element got a keyboard and screen-reader pass, and forms use real labels with error messages that say what to do rather than what went wrong.
The content got rewritten in the words patients use, with the clinical term alongside for accuracy. "Cracked or chipped tooth" as the page title, "indirect restoration" in the body where it belongs. That single change is why those pages now rank — patient language and search language are the same language.
Booking connects to their practice management system, so patients see real slots per practice and per clinician instead of requesting a callback. Clinician profiles carry credentials, specialisms, languages spoken, and their own booking link, because patients pick a person.
One thing we documented before writing any code: what happens to a form submission that mentions a symptom. That's health information. Storage location, who can read it, retention period, and encryption all written down and signed off, with a BAA covering our part.