The Business Case for Web Accessibility
As a business, you would never erect a bunch of barriers at the entrance to your storefront that might prevent patrons with limited mobility from coming into your establishment. Your company would never pay for a giant billboard on the side of the highway that only uses 8-point Helvetica font that people driving by wouldn’t be able to read. It probably wouldn’t make sense for you to run ads on the radio that don’t use professional voice-overs or catchy jingles, or TV or print ads lacking text and visual imagery. Typically, you wouldn’t just rely on only one medium, but a combination of all of these to reach the broadest audience possible.
So, why is it that businesses don’t seem to put the same care into ensuring that their web sites are accessible to all of their customers?
Nowadays, in an increasingly digital world, people are using their smartphones, tablets and computers to search for and consume a majority of their information. As a business, if your web site is not completely accessible you could be unintentionally closing off your products and services to a growing segment of the population – people who were either born with or have acquired disabilities who have to rely on assistive technology to navigate the web. And, if you believe that this is a problem that will eventually just go away or run its course, think again.
Consider the fact that our generation uses technology exponentially more than our parents and our grandparents’ generations before us. While most of our parents (and to a lesser extent—our grandparents) now have cell phones, Facebook pages and watch YouTube videos like the rest of us. Most would be characterized as late adopters of technology, some only doing so after giving up and caving to mounting societal pressures to become part of our increasingly interconnected world. In comparison, our generation and the generations that will come after us will have been using technology our entire adult life. Humans and technology are inseparable. The internet, mobile devices and social media have redefined how we live, work and play. And when it’s our turn, technology will undoubtedly factor into how our generation will spend our twilight years, because our interdependence on our technology is not just going to go away when we start experiencing all of the common health problems like Macular degeneration, partial hearing loss, etc. that usually tend to affect people later in life.
To put it in marketing terms, that small but significant slice of your potential customer base that you may be missing out on now by having a website that is not completely accessible, is a population that is only going to get bigger and bigger over time, as more and more of us age and find ourselves needing to rely on assistive technology to do all of the web-based things that we have grown accustomed to.
But if you still need some other reasons for making the business case for web accessibility, just consider all of the customers/sales that you are probably losing out on, the countless applicants who aren’t able to access your job postings or fill out your online applications, or your customers and other key stakeholders who aren’t receiving those important communications from you (for example, digitally rendered marketing pieces or videos that aren’t in an accessible format) which is something you definitely can’t afford during a crisis like the one we are experiencing right now.
So why wait, why not just take care of this now?
If you are still on the fence about whether to start your accessibility project, here are five things that business owners and other key decision makers should keep in mind:
1. Accessibility doesn’t have to be scary
One of the biggest things we come across when talking with prospective clients, is fear of the unknown. We get it. For the most part, businesses understand that accessibility is important and they want to do the right thing, but oftentimes they’re worried about even starting the process because they don’t know what can of worms they might potentially be opening up.
Accessiversity offers organizations a safe, proactive way to “dip their toe in the water” and assess how well they’re doing when it comes to accessibility. The services we provide are completely confidential and any assessments that we produce as a result of our work are handed over to you so you can determine how best to address any issues identified by our team.
2. Accessibility doesn’t have to be expensive
To a certain extent, cost will always be a function of the overall size/scope of a given project. But what if you could control the size and scope of your accessibility project, and ultimately the cost? Not only does Accessiversity offer several basic services that are priced so as to not be cost-prohibitive for organizations with limited budgets and/or competing priorities. All of our services can be combined, scaled and tailored to provide a solution that can address your most immediate priorities, and evolve along with your organization and its ongoing accessibility testing needs.
3. Accessibility doesn’t have to be complicated
What makes Accessiversity different is that we use actual individuals with disabilities to perform “live” (manual) testing of a customer’s website, software products, mobile application, business processes, etc. to provide an authentic “accessibility experience”. This helps our clients understand how individuals with disabilities will be interacting with their website or system. Although we sometimes use automated testing tools to complete a baseline accessibility scan and provide the customer with the results of any specific technical errors, we typically present the findings of our assessment in an easy to read, easy to understand report that we go over with the client afterward. This allows them to understand any issues that they will need to resolve, and why these are problematic from an accessibility perspective.
4. Accessibility is not something that you have to figure out on your own
At the conclusion of a project, when Accessiversity delivers its findings, you could just choose to have your internal IT department or web developer resolve any of the issues that were identified by our team. Depending on the website and types of issues uncovered during our assessment, many of the fixes may be relatively simple things that could be taken care of by making simple changes on the backend of whatever CRM tool a particular site might be using. But for those clients who need some additional assistance, we have several IT solutions providers (listed on the Accessiversity page) who we are able to refer clients to if they need assistance with remediation of accessibility issues or would like help with a complete system redesign.
5. Accessibility is not a “one and done” type proposition
This is one of the most important, but often overlooked points that organizations need to understand about web accessibility. Accessibility doesn’t end after you do your first assessment, or even after you implement all of the needed changes that were identified. An accessible website is only as good as the day that assessment and those changes were completed, so it's important to have a plan for how you will ensure that your website will remain compliant as new changes are made to it and additional content is added. Accessiversity can assist organizations with training those staff who will be responsible for making changes and/or adding content to their website, and we also have varying retainer-type programs where we can provide routine “live” (manual) testing to conduct ongoing assessments of the entire website, or even just specific pages where changes or new content was added. Businesses can also subscribe to services like Accessible Metrics to perform periodic scans of their web site to flag any potential errors that might pop up over time.
Whatever you decide to do, just remember that any investment you make to ensure your web site is more accessible to individuals with disabilities will ultimately make your website more usable for your current and prospective customers. And that makes good business sense, no matter how you look at it.
Contact us for a free consultation:
Chris Knapp, Accessiversity Labs CEO
517-881-4256
A sequestered, socially distant Chris works on his laptop at the kitchen table.