Complying with ADA’s and WCAG guidelines isn’t just costly, but it’s really complicated too – that is, if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Here’s the thing, website owners in the country are being sued by people with disabilities left and right because the latter can’t use their sites.
Domino’s Pizza, for example, was sued by a PWD because he couldn’t order pizza through their site.
(Image Source: accessiBe)
If you are looking for a solution to comply with ADA standards without having to spend thousands of dollars by working with manual web accessibility solutions, then you need to check out accessiBe – an automated web accessibility solutions platform.
How does accessiBe work?
accessiBe is a fully automated platform fitted with the latest AI technology to ensure your website complies with ADA, section 508 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.
Each time you upload (or update) content on your website, accessiBe will automatically scan, analyze, and adjusts the different elements in your content to make sure they meet the standards and are compliant.
The best part about this is that it requires absolutely zero coding for it to work.
When you’ve fully integrated accessiBe onto your website, all your visitors have to do is to press the Alt + 1.
This command opens the Quick Navigation pane. This is where they can set various functions like keyboard navigation and screen readers to run in the background.
Once these features are turned on, accessiBe uses machine learning and AI technology to get to know your website and all the different elements you have in place.
It will then run the essential apps in the background in real-time while your visitors who are struggling with their motor functions or are visually impaired.
The platform also includes a host of tools visitors can use to adjust different parts of your web page so that the look and feel of your website is easy for them to navigate.
For example, let’s say someone that’s visually-impaired and needs to adjust the font size on your product pages.
They can access the Content Adjustment dashboard by clicking on the International Symbol of Access button on your web page.
Once they click this, it’ll give them a list of tools like emphasizing the titles on the page or increasing the font size.
You can also choose colors that would be friendly and pleasing to view for your site visitors with epilepsy or are color blind.
How do you get accessiBe up and running on your website?
What’s great about accessiBe is that it’s fully compatible with many of the Content Management Systems (CMS) popularly used like Wix, Shopify, WordPress, and Volusion.
For this review, however, I’ll be discussing how to install accessiBe on a website using the WordPress CMS.
The reason is simple: WordPress remains to be the most widely used CMS by companies and business professionals for setting up their websites and blogs.
To install accessiBe to your WordPress site, you’ll first need to create an account on accessiBe’s website.
After that, click on the Installation link on the dashboard’s navigation menu. This will take you to the different installation guides for the different CMS mentioned earlier.
Click on the option “accessiBe embedding,” followed by the option “Copy to Clipboard.”
Once you have this, log into the backend of your WordPress website.
Under the Appearance menu in your WordPress dashboard, click on “Customize.”
This will take you to another menu that’ll allow you to customize the different parts of your website. Click on “Theme Settings” followed by “Headers & Footers.”
Paste the script you’ve copied from accessiBe’s website in the space titled “Footer Scripts.”
Then click “Publish.”
Congratulations! You’ve successfully installed accessiBe to your WordPress website.
Are there any drawbacks to using accessiBe?
Let’s get real here for a moment: There’s no such thing as a perfect tool or app. In fact, there are somethings about accessiBe that can still be improved.
For example, your website doesn’t become WCAG 2.1 and ADA compliant the moment you successfully embed the accessiBe’s script to your site.
It would take accessiBe’s AI and machine learning capabilities 48 hours to go through your entire website and make this fully compliant to WCAG 2.1 and ADA guidelines.
However, even though the 48-hour waiting time could use some improvement, it’s worth pointing out that manual web accessibility solutions would take months (some would take over six months, even) to pull off what accessiBe can do in a meager 48 hours.
That being said, accessiBe’s AI-powered automated web accessibility solutions is still miles ahead of its competitors.
As far as pricing goes, accessiBe isn’t free.
It would have been great if they were, but then again, with how robust and reliable their web accessibility solutions are, it only makes sense for them to charge their customers to continue providing exceptional service.
Integrating accessiBe to your website will cost you $490/year. At first, this may sound like quite a hefty price to pay. But think about it for a moment.
Going through a compliance lawsuit is a very expensive and painful ordeal to go through.
You can be looking at paying $50,000 to $75,000 to settle these types of lawsuits, all because your website isn’t fully compliant.
And if you work with manual web accessibility services, they could very well charge you about $10,000 to make your website compliant (and that doesn’t even include maintenance).
Then there’s the damage to your company’s reputation. Thanks to social media, customers have now become even more vocal about sharing their experience with a company, especially when it’s a negative one.
Combine that with the extensive media coverage you’ll receive once the case goes to court, and you got a crisis in your hands.
Final word
Web accessibility issues may not be as huge of a problem as security breaches and identity theft. Nevertheless, it’s still an issue and a concern that every company with a website should take seriously.
Investing in a tool like accessiBe will ensure that your website provides a positive experience for all your customers, particularly those with disabilities.
This will help you establish your credibility and reputation among your target market, resulting in more sales and loyal customers in the long run.