Author: Eyal Bar, Head of accessibility, Allyable.
Surprisingly, quite a lot of brands and companies incur significant financial losses, and they don’t even realize that! And, the surprising fact is that the reason – lack of websites’ digital accessibility.
Several acts and laws established certain web standards of accessibility for people with disabilities, like ADA or Section 508. Of course, these rules extend not only to digital, yet this is their main regulation field. The non-compliance with these rules leads to some lawsuits and penalties.
The number of disabled people in the US is over 60M, and this number keeps constantly growing. Stop losing your money right now! Companies that neglect digital accessibility lose a lot of money every year! Here we are going to explain the basics and how to avoid money loss!
Digital Accessibility and E-Commerce
eCommerce is a relatively new phenomenon, yet it has already managed to show its significance. The total sales price reaches approximately $450B. The number will grow twice larger by 2023. Yet, if the traders cared more about the compliance of ADA standards, the numbers would have been even more.
The studies show that the spending power of people with disabilities consists of $490B! That’s what makes accessibility important in the case of business. But the other research shows that most impaired people give up e-shopping. The main reason for that is the low level of websites’ availability. And what’s more surprising, most websites holders don’t even have a clue that such a problem exists.
But are there any other reasons, besides the financial one, why you should care about ADA standards compliance?
- Increase in traffic
As we mentioned above, the number of people with disabilities is above 60M. Some statistics reveal the number of 61M, while others say there’s 64M. In both cases, the numbers are impressive. Just imagine how many customers you lose, because your website is not convenient enough!
- Rise of the reputation
ActuA11y, impaired people have families and friends who care about them. Thus, if your site does not meet the standards of web accessibility, they will share this with their friends and relatives. It is like a snowball effect: those who are not satisfied with your site share their opinions with friends of theirs and so on. This might shorten the list of users, and you probably lose not only those 60M, yet even more people.
- Saves you from lawsuits
The compliance with ADA, Section 508 is not optional but obligatory. Yet, many brands still do not comply with these rules. As a result, the number of digital accessibility lawsuits keeps growing annuA11y. Besides, availability lawsuits are certainly not beneficial to your reputation, so this is an important thing to consider.
How to Become More Accessible
So, how can you provide your users with more digital accessibility? Here is our little checklist of all the necessary points you should consider and also, the tools to fulfill them.
- Comply with WCAG
There are several established sets of rules and guidelines that help to regulate the level of availability of your website. For instance, the basic WCAG rules include four main principles you must comply with: apprehensible, workable, comprehensible, and sane. These four points imply all the necessary info you should know about digital accessibility.
- Use automated tools for checkouts
Of course, you cannot rely only on automated tools when doing the availability test. Yet, they still provide great facilitation to the whole process. We advise you to check out our centralized accessibility check dashboard Allyable360, which includes multiple-level checkouts, gives you analytics and estimation of your accessibility level. Moreover, it has several built-in helping programs for better assistance. Therefore, you can easily comply with web standards.
- Do the manual checks
While the usage of fine-quality automated tools is rather good, still you can’t be limited only by them. Accessibility can’t be fully reached without a human check-out. Such testings provide you with the full info on your website’s availability and help to see the mistakes, which a computer can’t.
- Make your site simple
Try to make your site as easy to operate as possible. A smart design with clear functioning and services is essential. Moreover, make a list of common errors; so in case of some technical problems, users can manage to fix them on their own.
FAQs
- How do you ensure high standards of accessibility?
You can ensure your users the high standards of availability by complying with certain laws and guidelines which set the rules of accessibility. Moreover, having a long and multiple levels check out is also a great guarantee of enough level of accessibility for your clients.
- Why is digital accessibility important?
First of all, the importance of it is conditioned by the moral point of view. By not providing free and simple access to your site to all users, you discriminate against those who are limited in their abilities. Secondly, non-compliance with web accessibility standards will lead you to some lawsuits and charges. Thirdly, it is simply beneficial to you from an economic point of view.
- What are accessibility features?
Main accessibility features are described in WCAG. The main principles are a sufficient level of perceptiveness, effectiveness, clearness, and soundness.
Conclusion
To sum up, as you can see, the business case for accessibility is worth considering. Thousands of brands and companies lose billions simply because they cannot provide an acceptable level of accessibility for all of their users. Such ignorance and indifference are troublesome not only on the moral side of the matter but also lawful and economic.