Studio 77 partner with AccessiBe - Is your website accessible?
With approximately 20% of the global population having a disability, making sure your website is accessible is more important than ever. Accessing websites is now a part of everyday life that we all take for granted, and it’s for that reason the ADA (Americans with disabilities act) applies to businesses’ websites, not just physical locations/branches.
What is website accessibility?
“Web accessibility means that a websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can: perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web.”
These standards are set by the W3C in the form of the WCAG 2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guide). The rules focus on how websites are read by people who are blind, people with motor impairments who only use keyboards and also people with epilepsy, colour blindness and minor visual impairments.
These standards have been rightly accepted by governments and introduced into legislation such as the ADA (USA), IS5568 (Israel), EN301548 (EU) and many more.
Why is it essential to have an accessible website
I think the importance of having a compliant accessible website is split into two. The first and foremost important reason for having a compliant website is to help that vast percentage of the population with a disability have equal access to your website and its content. Suppose the content is not accessible for those with a disability on your website. In that case, it not only deters those people from using your website but could also, in turn, affect your brand’s reputation and image.
The second reason is lawsuits.
With a sharp increase of 320% in the last two years in lawsuits against websites siting the ADA, the importance of having an accessible website is becoming irrefutable. These have been targeted at businesses large and small, with settlements starting at 35000 USD.
Accessible Design at Studio 77
Where we at Studio 77 make sure that we are as WCAG 2.1 complaint with all our designs and branding, we do have some circumstances where we work with designs where branding and colour palettes already exist, or it can occur with website re-designs and builds the business has a lot of content to transfer over and old blogs that may not be compliant.
You can have us complete an audit and add/remove code, and re-design where necessary; however, this can be very time-consuming and not the best solution if you’re updating your website by yourself regularly.
This is where we have found AccessiBe to be the perfect solution to web accessibility issues. Using their incredible AI-powered software AccessiBe makes your website accessible to people using screen readers, people using just a keyboard and also to people with disabilities including ADHD, visual impairments and colour blindness (to name a few). The software takes your website and immediately makes it fully WCAG 2.1 compliant and makes it instantly accessible to the percentage of people with disabilities.
It does this without affecting your site’s user interface, design and experience. By adding the widget in the corner, which can be styled in line with your brand, your website immediately says, “this is a website that is accessible to everyone”. As an agency that works predominantly with charities and those in the wellness sector, we believe this is a message every website should be saying. That is why we’re so excited to announce our partnership with AccessiBe.
From now on, we will be offering a discount on the software and installation to all our existing and future clients, so if this blog has resonated with you, get in touch if you want to find out more by hitting the button below.
If you would like to find out more about Accessibe then click this link to go to their website where they offer a free trial and demonstration of the software.
