Website Accessibility
If you don’t have a disability or know someone who does, you probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how people with disabilities navigate the world. Technological innovations have made things easier for people with disabilities, but they have also made certain things harder.
The internet is a perfect example. People who can’t easily get outside can order what they need online and have it delivered.
But what if they’re visually impaired or can’t see your website? Then what are they supposed to do?
If they can’t use your website, they can’t buy your products/services, much less recommend you to their friends and family. The result is you lose out on opportunities to make money, but that doesn’t have to be the case.
You could do the work yourself to make sure your website is more accessible to everyone (or have your web developer do it for you), but it is time consuming or expensive. Luckily, there is an easier way.
That’s why I’ve partnered with accessiBe to provide a widget for my clients who are interested in making sure their website is accessible to as many people as possible. The widget includes:
Easy navigation for those who can’t use a cursor;
Automatically adjusts everything from the color contrast to the size of your photos and the size of your font;
Uses image recognition to provide alternative text for your images to help the visually impaired understand what’s there;
It can even pause videos or flashing sequences for people with epilepsy;
12 built-in languages so people don’t need to be able to read or write English to use your website.
The widget rescans your website every 24 hours and uses artificial intelligence to make updates as needed to make sure all the content on your website is accessible to as many people as possible.
In addition to being good business, making your website accessible also helps improve its search engine optimization (SEO). People with disabilities use search engines like Google, so those search engines like to make sure they are directing their users to websites they can access. That means having an accessible website will give you a leg up over the competition.
As a business owner, you’re also legally required to maintain a website that is as widely accessible as possible. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires all businesses with spaces available to the public to make those spaces accessible to people with disabilities. Since your website is on the internet for everyone to see, it’s legally considered a public space, which means it has to be accessible.
The widget can keep your website compliant with ADA standards automatically while you focus on running your business.
Installation of the widget is quick and costs $100, plus an annual subscription fee of $490/year. That comes down to just a little more than $40/month. Most businesses pay more than that for business insurance and SEO tools to improve the performance of their website.
By helping you keep your website compliant with ADA standards and improving your website’s SEO, this one widget is doing the work of several website applications and services. That makes it, not only necessary, but one of the best investments you could make for your business.
For the sake of transparency, I will say that I am an affiliate of accessiBe, which means I do get a small commission for the clients I send their way. That said, I wouldn’t promote this product if I didn’t believe it was necessary. You may have noticed that I have it installed on my own website.
If you want to try the widget for yourself, but you’re not sure it’s worth the investment, you can take advantage of their 7-day trial. If you’re not convinced after one week, you can have the widget uninstalled from your website at no extra cost to you or your business.
If you want to learn more about accessiBe, you can check out their demo video here.
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