Opening the Digital Door for Everyone

Web accessibility refers to making websites usable for people with disabilities. It involves designing and developing websites in a way that people with disabilities, such as those with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive impairments, can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the website and its content.

Web accessibility ensures that everyone has equal access to information and services on the web, regardless of their abilities. This includes individuals who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers, to access the web.

‍

It is important to know that the U.S. government has chosen to promote and support businesses that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). By making your website accessible, your business can be eligible for up to $5,000 in tax credits.

‍

Improved Performance

It is essential to understand that accessible websites enjoy increased traffic and improved SEO rankings. This benefit might be significant to your client’s business.

Below you can find a snippet available for you to share with your client via conversation or email:

“Accessible websites enjoy increased traffic, reduced bounce rates, improved SEO rankings, and better conversion rates. An accessible website means that you’re making it easier for people to find your website.

A new study by Semrush analyzed 847 web domains and found that:

- There was a 12% average increase in overall traffic for all domains
- 73.4% of domains saw growth in organic traffic
- 66.1% of all domains saw growth in organic traffic of up to 50%

With Google constantly calculating search engine result page (SERP) rankings by evaluating sites based partly on web page usability and user experience, it logically follows that websites with more accessibility features would be prioritized over sites without those accommodations.

‍

• Making your website inclusive and accessible for everyone will open your business to 15% of the population
• Reaffirm your brand as inclusive
• When you make your website accessible, you optimize the reach of your website with improved performance and increased traffic, and you improve your SEO
• When you make your website accessible, you become compliant with the law
• By making your website accessible, you mitigate the legal and financial risk

An accessible website has become a fundamental requirement, so when you take action and become accessible, you:

• Optimize the reach of your website with improved performance and increased traffic
  Widen your user base
• Reaffirm your brand as inclusive
• Mitigate the legal and financial risk for your business.

You may know that the current legislation requires web accessibility, but also, the public’s opinion is moving in the same direction. By making your website accessible, you can help mitigate your business's legal and financial risk, improve your SEO, demonstrate your brand is inclusive, reach out to a substantial underserved market (that has significant purchasing power), and do the right thing.

ADA and WCAG

What are they?

The ADA is the Americans with Disabilities Act, an American civil rights law passed in 1990. The law prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places open to the general public. Since 2018, the ADA also covers websites, as they’re considered public places of accommodation. That is why making your website accessible is crucial for meeting ADA legal requirements.

It’s important to note that the ADA does not specify the criteria for a compliant website, yet today's industry standard is to adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG).

The WCAG is a technical guidebook explaining how websites should look and operate for people with disabilities. So, by following the WCAG guidelines, you are making your website ADA-compliant.

‍

Web accessibility lawsuit numbers and trends

In recent years, there has been a surge in state court lawsuits regarding web accessibility. 2023 saw a record-breaking number of lawsuits and demand letters under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), with 4,605 lawsuits filed. It is estimated that only 3% of demand letters go to trial, as the majority, approximately 97%, are settled beforehand. This indicates that over 100,000 business owners received demand letters in 2023 for failing to make their websites accessible. Moreover, organizations and businesses can be fined up to $150,000 for ADA violations, while the average ADA website lawsuit settlement typically ranges "from $20,000 to $50,000.

By making a website accessible and compliant, you mitigate the legal risk, a risk that can cost much more: The average settlement is around $30,000. The widget we can implement for you costs far less at only $49 a month, or $490 a year.

The web accessibility trend is growing exponentially, and doing nothing in the face of this is no longer an option. Pragmatic solutions must be evaluated to mitigate the risk that all website owners face now. It's time to take action in order to manage the risk instead of ignoring this growing threat and waiting for a crisis to emerge. It is also essential to know that the accessibility tax credit is a game-changer for budget-conscious businesses and effectively reduces the cost of accessibility expenditure by anywhere from 20% to 50%.

With today’s technology, some aspects of a website, such as PDF and media files, can’t be remediated automatically. To ensure these files on your website are accessible and compliant, both us and our partners provide you with a dedicated service department that can remediate such files.

Much of this negative press is driven by people who are heavily invested in the manual remediation industry, and such disruptive technologies will always attract detractors. Many tools on the market, especially the free ones, fail to meet compliance levels. People tend to slap any of these basic tools on their websites, thinking they are accessible, which is the farthest thing from the truth. Over 80% of the WCAG requirements speak to elements of a website that help users who rely on assistive technologies (i.e., screen reader), which cannot be resolved using these tools. Rest assured, this is not the case with our widget. When properly installed on your website, our widget helps your website become WCAG compliant. You can watch this video that shows us in action in real-time.

As an accessiBe partner, our prices are exactly the same. So why should you choose us?

A few reasons to go through us:

• We receive a small commission, so you will be supporting another small business.
• You get professional installation from someone you know already (if you are a returning client of course)
• We can brand the widget to match the colors of your site
• This could be included into a package of our other services.
• We can still provide all of the services they provide, including their amazing litigation support package, their

If you would rather go directly to accessiBe and do it yourself, you can use this link and we will still receive the same commission. Although by doing this you will be dealing directly with accessiBe and therefore our access to make any changes for you would be limited.

‍