If you have perused our site for any length of time, you likely found yourself on our services page. At the bottom of the main services page is a list of “a la carte” add-ons that are available to our current and prospective clients. One of those add-ons is a basic accessibility review.

Basic Digital Accessibility Review

But what IS a basic digital accessibility review? It involves you giving Shawna administrative access to the backend of your website. Shawna starts her review by looking for obvious things that can be fixed right away to improve the accessibility of your website for every user. These things include the contrast between your background and the text, the size of your text, how your links are indicated, the page load times, among others. At the same time, she brings in our accessibility partner, Rob Stemple. Rob combs through your site using a variety of programs and screen readers to determine usability for the vision impaired and blind users who rely on a screen reader to navigate the interwebs. We test four commonly used screen reader programs; Jaws, NVDA, Narrator, and Voiceover (IOS aka the built in reader for Apple products).

Once Shawna is granted access to the backend of the site, she looks at the alt text of your images, the size of your graphics, if your pages utilize the heading formats properly, etc.

Finishing the review

Once the review is complete, Shawna generates a report that lists the deficiencies found by Rob and herself along with suggestions on how to improve accessibility. You are then free to make the changes yourself or bring us on to bring your site as up to speed as we are able to based on current WCAG 2.0 standards.

Why you should have one done

Did you know there are more than 1 billion people in the world with an identified disability? Those 1 billion users with a disability account for nearly 6 TRILLION (yes, with a T) dollars in spending ability. In the United States alone, nearly 1 in 5 people have a disability. This could be physical, cognitive, or developmental. That’s 20% of the US’s population. If we forget for a moment that ensuring accessibility is just the right thing to do and dive into the dollars and cents justification…

Would you want to alienate that many people who will not be able to access your site, and thus not be able to invest in your product or services?

Digital accessibility is a requirement for some, but beneficial for all. The changes made to a website to make it accessible for all provides a better user experience for every person that engages in your site. Accessibility standards cross over and assist in bumping up that SEO juice.

Be a standout in the crowd. Less than 5% of all websites out there currently meet basic accessibility guidelines. Get in touch today so we can help you make your website easier to access.