Global Accessibility Awareness Day

What Is Website Accessibility?

There is a lot of news lately about lawyers trying to force targeted industries like home buying and selling to comply with website accessibility standards.  So what exactly is meant by website accessibility?  According to the W3c – the global organization that creates standards for the Internet:

When websites and web tools are properly designed and coded, people with disabilities can use them. However, currently many sites and tools are developed with accessibility barriers that make them difficult or impossible for some people to use.

Making the web accessible benefits individuals, businesses, and society. International web standards define what is needed for accessibility.

Last year, every website we developed for clients included an accessibility tool from AccessiBe that allows access to our sites for people with physical and emotional challenges using today’s technology.

There are many reasons people might need assistance from technology to use the technology that all of us have become aware of.  This include:

• Blindness and the need to use a screen reader and their keyboard to scroll through your site
• People with ADHD can use assistance to focus
• Aging Adults who now need to increase the font size and contrast of your website

Why should a small business owner spend additional money to add functionality for a minority of customers to their business?

Because it is the right thing to do

Why don’t business owners make Website Accessibility a priority?

Last year one of my clients got a letter from an attorney telling them that their website was not accessible to people covered by the Americans with Disability Act.  In 2018 the Trump DOJ ruled that all businesses who have a website need to comply with the W3c website accessibility standards.  When I explained this to potential clients, I was shocked by their answers justifying doing nothing:

A chiropractor – a person who heals people that are suffering from some of the provisons of the act refused to even consider it.

A financial fiduciary  – a person who is required to act in the best intersts of her cleints refised to even listen to it

A motage broker, a peron in an inditry being targted because of the need for people covered by the ADA to get homes ignored it until he got a claim letter

Two former netwrkign partners of mine told me that they were going to do it themselves.  Hours and hours of work later they installed the AccessiBe solutuon

Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day.  Our technology partner has produced this video describing why many of your customers need to use this technology to use your website.  Check it out.

Need help with website accessibility – or want to see how your website stacks up.  Go to AccessiBe, and you can audit your website free of charge.  If you need help with the installation, please reach out to us, and we will be glad to help you get started at no charge – because – it is the right thing to do.