Hi Jenna! Can you tell us more about your experience with digital accessibility?
My experience with accessibility started while working at a web development firm, where I worked directly with clients who came to me with accessibility concerns.
Working with these clients to try to help, I saw the need for better solutions for testing and reporting accessibility issues. I also had a front-row seat to witness the disconnect between accessibility experts and developers and the resulting issues that this gap caused.
I essentially became a liaison between accessibility experts and developers, translating issues so that both sides understood what was going on, and this is where I formed my expertise around the relationship between digital accessibility and development.
Then I decided to leave that role and start my own company, ilumino, that focused entirely on lighting a better path to digital accessibility.
What does it mean when a website is “accessible”?
Similar to how buildings have accessibility requirements, such as wheelchair ramps or door handle heights, there is a defined list of standards that you can follow when making a website accessible.
Digital accessibility means creating technology that anyone can use, regardless of device, ability, or situation. It means making considerations in your design and development process for people with disabilities, whether related to vision, mobility, or cognition.
It means including everyone in your online experience.
Are there varying levels of commitment organizations can make regarding accessibility?
Yes.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) have three levels you can meet, which are like batteries: A, AA, and AAA. The level you should reach is based on your industry or legal requirements, but most organizations are shooting for AA standards.
In your experience, what are some of the most common misconceptions regarding accessibility?
There are a handful of common misconceptions, but I’ll focus on two.
“The first misconception is the idea that accessibility will make my website or brand ugly. “
Could this be true? Sure, but it will largely depend on the company you’re working with.
For example, I worked on a project with a wine company that wanted its branding to be consistent with its top-selling wine label. However, this was creating color contrast issues.
Before working with my team, they had spoken with multiple other vendors who told them they would have to change the colors that were creating the color contrast issues.
Then, they came to us, and we were able to incorporate their brand colors using a more creative approach. So, it’s important to work with someone who understands brand design and accessibility, not just accessibility.
“The second misconception is that accessibility doesn’t affect my organization.”
Most people don’t realize how many people might be affected by accessibility issues.
When we start working with clients on projects and educating them on different accessibility needs, they’ll realize how many people in their own lives might be affected by this. It could be something like glaucoma, or, in my case, I recently broke my finger, which makes working with a keyboard challenging.
We have temporary and long-term impairments to consider.
An example of this misconception comes from a project we worked on for a global motorcycle brand. The brand believed that if their audience could ride a motorcycle, they would likely not have accessibility issues.
Once we started digging into their user base, however, we learned that sometimes the person buying the motorcycle isn’t the one riding it. Some people might also buy items for collections.
When we investigated further, we realized that digital accessibility might affect about 25% of their audience.
It’s also important to consider the individual and those around them, such as family.
Your family will support brands that support you, so if you neglect an individual’s accessibility needs, you could miss out on an opportunity to develop brand loyalty with the other people in their network.
Does digital accessibility have to be expensive?
No, it does not have to be expensive. It can become expensive if you aren’t working with a company that understands the development and accessibility process.
For example, an accessibility expert might tell you that your donation experience isn’t accessible and that you need to rebuild it. In contrast, you might work with someone who understands the development process and can tell you what is causing your accessibility issue and give you different options for fixing it.
Working with an expert who understands the issue and solution will be cheaper than hiring someone who just focuses on accessibility testing.
Further, there are typically two different routes to accessibility.
Sometimes, it makes more sense to rebuild your website with accessibility from the ground up. Other times, it may make more sense to develop an accessibility roadmap.
If your website is 15 years old, rebuilding will likely be more cost-effective.
Other times, with a more gradual approach, you commit to addressing a certain number of accessibility issues every month while building a backlog of updates and issues you plan on addressing monthly moving forward. This can help break down the accessibility investment into smaller pieces.
The key to making your existing website accessible is a two-pronged approach.
- Ensure that everything you add to your website (features, pages, content, etc.…) meets your desired standard.
- Create a complete list of all parts of your website that are not accessible and make a plan for addressing them within a realistic time frame. For example tThis could be a plan to address five issues every month.
If you pursue the gradual approach, focus first on the issues creating the biggest barriers for your users and then work your way down.
Where do you see a role for 3rd party accessibility experts?
Digital accessibility is changing rapidly. Whether it’s the legal aspect, web standards, or changes to programming practices, ongoing education and development are needed.
It’s almost a full-time job keeping up with these changes, so specialized expertise is important.
Further, testing for accessibility requires specific tools, access to assistive technologies, and expertise, which can often be found in specialized digital accessibility firms.
What should nonprofits look for in accessibility partners?
Regarding accessibility partners, it’s important to look for human testing.
Many automated solutions can be helpful today, but these solutions can’t truly simulate the human experience.
A nonprofit could identify and resolve some of its digital accessibility issues with an automated solution and reach the end of the process. However, it would still be at risk because these automated solutions are not reaching the required depth of testing required to meet the guidelines.
If your car keeps breaking down, even if your mechanic’s diagnostic tool isn’t detecting any issues, you still have a problem with your car!
The other thing nonprofits want to look for in accessibility partners is comprehensive deliverables. Ideally, you want to work with a partner who not only understands how to identify and report issues but also knows, from a development perspective, how to fix these problems.
For example, instead of your partner providing a report that just tells you about a color contrast issue, you want a partner to tell you which colors within your brand guidelines you can swap to fix it.
If the issue is with the code, look for a partner who can provide code snippet recommendations that will solve the issue.
What is the role of “overlays” in pursuing digital accessibility?
Accessibility overlays are not fool-proof solutions and can often cause more harm than good.
Most people who need assistance engaging with websites already use their own tools. They may be using their computer’s default settings for color contrast, or they may be licensing and using their preferred screen reader.
Adding an overlay solution can often interfere with the experience these users have already become accustomed to, posing more of a problem than a solution.
Plus, for visitors who don’t use assistive technology, overlays will likely negatively interfere with their experience and cause them to bounce from your website or lose trust in your brand.
Further, with the broad range of different overlay solutions available on the market, a user may have to learn a new tool each time they land on a new website, which can be incredibly frustrating.
What is the current legal landscape regarding accessibility and the nonprofit sector?
First, it’s important to understand the two types of accessibility lawsuits we often see in this space.
One is called serial filing when a law firm and a plaintiff team up to target many companies at once.
Often, litigious individuals will have automated bots scrape through dozens of websites in a particular niche or location—think expensive handbags—intentionally looking for accessibility issues and serially submitting copycat lawsuits. In some cases, we’ve helped companies who have received these types of complaints prove that said issue does not exist.
The other scenario is when real users have legitimate issues with a website.
If we look at some of the data from 2023, nonprofits are involved in less than 2% of the digital accessibility lawsuits filed. Experts expect this percentage to increase in 2024 and so on, as most large companies have been targeted, and the lawsuits are trending to smaller companies that haven’t been hit.
That being said, several factors must be considered when assessing risk.
First, location is a big factor. Certain states, like New York, California, and Florida, are popular hotbeds for these lawsuits.
Further, while nonprofits may be at lesser risk today of these serial filing-type lawsuits, they always risk having real users encounter legitimate issues with their websites.
What we see with the one-off real users is that they typically are seeking genuine help. They aren’t necessarily looking to litigate.
That said, a poor response from the website owner can turn a genuine concern into frustration.
How should an organization respond to a genuine accessibility issue from a real user?
One issue is that organizations are not equipped to handle these requests.
They may receive an email from a user raising a concern about an accessibility issue, and they respond by denying the problem, misunderstanding the user, or recommending poor solutions.
If you respond poorly to these requests, you may frustrate the user, so it’s important to set up a response process.
We recommend training someone on your staff to handle these and ensuring that all incoming accessibility requests are automatically routed to this person.
Consider drafting a set of scenarios with pre-defined responses that your team can lean on when these issues arise. Then, we recommend that you immediately engage an accessibility expert to assist you with a proper resolution for the user’s concern.
What do you hope to see in the future of digital accessibility?
My hope for the future is that digital accessibility becomes integrated directly into the education and training of developers, writers, and designers. Right now, accessibility is still seen as separate from these disciplines, which is why we need to find specialized expertise.
Eventually, I’d love to see it be part of any training curriculum for people building digital products.
