Marketing Website Accessibility in the Age of Assumptions
Offering website accessibility services has attracted enthusiastic interest from digital marketing and web design companies seeking new revenue streams.
Ground zero is overcoming accessibility assumptions, myths, biases, and even misguided marketing about what accessibility is and who it is for.
Which Leg Is First?
When you put on your shoes, which foot do you choose first? Is it your left foot, or right foot? Do you sit or stand on one leg and then switch legs? Do you wear shoes? Do you wear socks with sandals? (Had to ask.) Do you own shoes?
What happens for people who do not have feet?
How often do web designers, developers, and marketers think about what we do, and how we do it? Why do we do it? When do we do it?
What happens when we can’t do it?
The assumption is that everyone can use our websites. They’ll figure it out.
There Is Gold in ADA Lawsuits
There once was a time in America where people lived, hunted and went to war over buffalo and boundaries, or a show of machoism between tribes.
When the country was “discovered”, a new group of people arrived and grabbed the land on the authority of a “chief” from somewhere across the big ocean who had never been there but assumed Native Americans wouldn’t mind a few changes.
Did they know who the people were who inhabited the mountains?
Was anyone brainstorming at a meeting with a gigantic whiteboard exploring all the ways to invade, create, persuade, trade with, sell to, convert, and otherwise dump a new system of life on people who could not use any of it?
No silly. Whiteboards didn’t exist back then.
The insult was the assumption by the British that the land was for sale at all.
How do you sell something you do not understand?
How do we build websites for people we do not understand?
Why do we build websites to sell products and services that target only the people we assume will be able to use the website?
According to the World Health Organization, at least 15% of the world’s population suffer from a disability.
The 2019 Midyear Update on ADA Website and Mobile App Accessibility by UsableNet found that:
When you stop to consider how much of the company budget goes towards digital marketing strategies and hiring SEO professionals to wrestle with search engines that change their business models every month, wouldn’t it make sense to provide an accessible website that will convert more visitors when they arrive?
Offering website accessibility services sparked some marketers to explore if they could automate accessibility testing or provide accessibility insurance policies to prevent an ADA lawsuit.
It would be a real gold rush if making websites accessible was so easy. How about a software application that codes it for you? Remember Frontpage for web design?
Understanding Accessibility & Removing Assumptions
Selling accessibility services is complicated. It’s not just about the costs. The difficult part is overcoming assumptions about why accessibility is important to web businesses.
From my personal experiences, educating prospective clients on website accessibility takes time.
Inclusive web design has never been a favorite area for stakeholders.
Usability and conversions are. Mobile design is. Performance is hot.
But website accessibility is like entering a new country and ignoring how things are done there.
At first glance, it sure looks easy enough to set up accessibility testing or design services or provide products like accessible plug-ins, WordPress themes, and automated testing apps.
One example is to simply write up a marketing campaign about the surge of website accessibility ADA lawsuits and how business websites are easy prey.
Convince prospective clients that you can save them enormous legal fees by performing accessibility tests to find all the accessibility errors that fail WCAG2.1 Guidelines.
Run some automated tests, produce a report with findings and walk away with a check.
The most common mistake is marketing accessibility design and testing as a once and done process.
Small businesses say no to accessibility testing because they have limited financial resources. They may be less likely to have a designer who knows how to design for accessibility.
Perhaps they purchased an inexpensive ready-made website, love it to pieces, and truly have no idea whether certain people are unable to use it.
This target market is terrified of the stories about ADA lawsuits. More than once I am told that a lawsuit will put a small company out of business.
Making accessibility services affordable makes sense. It also requires tremendous patience and a willingness to help these smaller businesses with education and ongoing support at fees they can tolerate.
Larger companies with bigger budgets are more inclined to invest in accessibility testing to satisfy their curiosity or take the offensive approach to any potential ADA lawsuit.
They require staff trained to fix issues that appear in accessibility reviews or a willingness to outsource accessibility specialists.
At the corporate level, interest in setting up an accessibility department increased, creating permanent jobs and a desire to “bake in” accessibility from the start, into the development process itself.
A positive outcome of providing accessibility testing or design services depends on the expertise of the people doing the work. This includes project managers, salespeople, web designers, web developers, and accessibility specialists.
In situations where a company has been served with a letter of complaint, the next steps may require legal assistance and possibly the services of an expert witness, certified accessibility specialist or accessibility agency specializing in advanced accessibility services.
But first things first.
How well do you know how people use websites?
Do any of your assumptions or biases prevent inclusive web design?
Assumptions, Biases & More Fairy Dust
Way back in the early days of search engines Mike Grehan, CMO & Managing Director of Acronym, researched and wrote an in-depth, 350 pages book called “Search Engine Marketing, the Essential Best Practice Guide.” The book shattered myths about the profession and provided sound practices and guidelines.
Finally, someone had the courage to stand up and say that ranking in search engines required more than magical fairy dust.
There were concerns that search engines would wreck the art of true information seeking.
“Web Dragons: Inside the Myths of Search Engine Technology” by Ian H. Witten, Marco Gori, and Teresa Numerico, explored ideas about how the web would change communication forever and search engines might someday control information and how we see the world.
It was praised by major influencers employed by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
While search engines looked for people to inform, educate, amuse and advertise to, web designers were experimenting with new ways to create pretty things to admire on the internet.
Web developers were inventing new programs to help build them.
Remember MIVA? ColdFusion? Hotdog? Frontpage?
Steve Krug saw the flaws in the work being produced. His book, “Don’t Make Me Think”, was written because websites were mazes for users just trying to get from point A to point B.
Peter Morville, author of “Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond,” arrived at early conclusions about how web information is organized and made information architecture a vital piece of knowledge every web designer and SEO needed to learn. Suddenly we were classifying, prioritizing, and designing rules for how to find stuff.
Next came all the behavior studies and mountains of data gathered about how we make decisions, search, purchase and develop loyalty to brands.
With each area of exploration came software developed to automate the process. This included eye tracking, keywords, links, competitor analysis, webmaster tools, and Google Analytics.
But something has been missing.
Did we assume the web included everyone?
Do web site owners bring their own personal biases to their websites?
Even with Section 508 and WCAG and accessibility laws for public-facing businesses in each country, online businesses are not designed for everyone to use them.
Automating website accessibility may grant a peek at 25% of errors.
Touchy-Feely Matters to People
A business owner once said to me, “I don’t care about that touchy-feely stuff you do.”
He wanted to sell his products online but had no interest in meeting the needs of customers who could use his website.
People who use websites reward companies that build websites they can use.
This is just how it is.
And yet, there are countless websites that people struggle with.
The rise in website accessibility lawsuits occurred because some people were turned away when they needed assistance to do something on a business website that matters to them.
Some examples include wanting to download a coupon from a store website, order pizza, purchase products, book reservations, and access online art galleries.
Whether we are seeking information, looking for social engagement, researching, educating ourselves, looking for entertainment, or browsing for something new, everyone wants to be included as a valued user.
The bigger surprise is how we neglected to design websites that valued online business customers with the same consideration that is often legally required for places of business offline.
Our web design practices lack empathy for disabled persons or anyone with a permanent or temporary impairment.
Removing Assumptions From Web Design
“Let them call us if they can’t read it,” I was told by a company that refused to make their documents accessible.
Forcing a blind person to call for help to get a document because the web version does not work on their screen reader is discrimination. Not providing accessible content is against WCAG2.1 or Section 508 recommendations.
So, back to the gold rush of opportunity for companies wanting to add accessibility services. Do you know how to make documents accessible?
Before you jump in, it is vital to understand accessibility so that you can accurately explain why it is important for today’s business websites.
The most prevalent assumption is that accessibility is for blind people. This is probably due to the bulk of ADA lawsuits coming from blind persons using screen readers. They are taking advantage of the rapid advances in assistive computer devices that aid persons with disabilities.
Assistive computer devices, software applications for reading, and mobile device accessibility settings help all people with sight impairments.
If you know someone who is colorblind, they are not seeing the same colors as you are.
If you know someone who uses corrective eyewear, they may rely on screen magnification or audible reading tools. They also struggle with contrasts and lighting, whether indoors or outside.
Should you add an accessibility plugin that allows people to adjust webpages so that they can use them?
Or do you build in accessibility and provide code in the background that responds to browser or mobile device commands to change font sizes, magnify or switch to dark mode?
Providing accessibility services requires vast knowledge about how to design for inclusion, test for inclusion and educate for inclusion. There are no shortcuts.
It is part of your role as an accessibility advocate or specialist to educate your clients on how to provide a website property that can be used regardless of a physical, mental, or emotional impairment that may be permanent or temporary.
If you wish to provide accessibility testing as a service, you will need to know the different types of disabilities that are covered and what design practices are recommended.
By law in most countries, businesses must be accessible to customers. Even though a business may not have a physical building, for ethical and moral reasons, the same consideration applies.
Yes, the ADA Title III wording in the USA does not include “websites”. This has not prevented ADA lawsuits from website users trying to conduct tasks on business websites.
Automated accessibility testing tools do not find all the issues, but they are a nice exploratory lift. Accessibility testing is a combination of manual and automated methodologies. User testing with persons with disabilities helps developers understand what is not working or where improvements are needed.
Screen reader testing is done manually. The process is long because screen readers are unique to browsers, operating systems, computer devices – not to mention user habits.
Remember when I asked what foot you choose to put your shoe on first? This is something unique to you.
People who use screen readers also use them differently. For example, they may sort content by heading tags to find what they want faster or to help understand the content topic of the page.
Challenges & Protections
Adding an accessibility statement to a website is a service that some companies offer. These are policies intended to protect the website owner by being forthcoming with information about the accessibility compliance of the website.
If they did not test a form, or do not plan on making their PDFs accessible, this is information that should be included in the accessibility statement.
The statement describes:
Some companies provide an accessibility statement for a fee as part of their accessibility services. The theory is that it helps prevent any legal action when there is proof the company is making an effort towards accessibility compliance.
The challenge here is that the moment anything new is added to the website, such as an image, new form, design layout change, or blog post, if it is not coded to be accessible, the accessibility statement is voided.
The same is true for software applications and forms on websites, WordPress theme updates and third-party plugins. Regression testing is required to verify that changes meet the accessibility standards claimed in the accessibility statement.
Another area of growing concern is protecting designers, developers and companies hired to build or maintain websites built to pass accessibility standards.
What protects you from clients who refuse to maintain the finished product?
What if you provide advice on a practice necessary to meet WCAG or Section 508 requirements and it is not implemented by the client, and they receive an ADA website accessibility lawsuit?
Another example might be choosing an accessible theme for WordPress and modifying the accessibility out of it either by accident or on purpose. The theme designer is not responsible for any changes to their compliant code.
Some companies must outsource third-party software that is not accessible, even though the rest of their website is.
There are circumstances where the developers of the third-party software are unable to update their software to meet accessibility compliance.
More and more contracts and accessibility statements are addressing these situations, but a vast majority of business websites are unaware and therefore potentially vulnerable.
The Accessibility Rabbit Hole
If you should decide to expand your knowledge about website accessibility, the good news is that most of the information is free to learn.
The bad news is that it may take years to educate yourself.
I am not afraid to admit that even though I have been conducting usability and conversions testing for nearly 20 years and included basic accessibility practices all along, when I went to apply for accessibility employment at the corporate level and was met with disdain by interviewers, it was a real shock.
In fact, I needed time to want to be part of the accessibility industry after meeting some of their leadership.
In trying to understand what was happening, I learned how deep the accessibility rabbit hole really is. It is not something to jump into lightly.
For digital marketers with a passion for conversions, the opportunities presented by website accessibility practices are wide open for you and your clients just by removing biases and assumptions about how people use websites.
There are people who have been building accessible websites and software for a long time. Search for accessibility podcasts to meet some of them.
LinkedIn, Twitter and Medium are additional outlets for accessibility advocates and leaders open to educating and guiding anyone interested in where to start.
Resources Referenced or Used in Research for This Article Books on Amazon
More Resources:
Interior designers reveal the 12 things in your home you should get rid of
Consider swapping out pillows that match your sofa.
Instead, try pillows in a different color. Shutterstock
Kimberly Rasmussen, a principal design partner at Establish Design, told Insider that you should perhaps toss couch pillows that match your sofa, including any that might have come with it.
"Instead, play with texture, color, and pattern to accent the main fabric," she said. "This is an investment that will add interest, and the fabrics will help pull your room together."
If you want a cozier space, it's time to toss harsh white lightbulbs.
It's not an expensive change to make. Shutterstock
"Replace your harsh, cool whites with a soft, warm white bulb," Rasmussen said. "This adds warmth to your room like the light from a candle or roaring fire."
Take down any window treatments that make it difficult for you to get natural light.
This might mean swapping out your heavy drapes for sheer ones. Shutterstock/backpacker79
Natural light can brighten a room, make it look larger, and show off light-catching finishes, according to Annie Santulli of Annie Santulli Designs.
So, naturally, the first thing she thinks you might want to get rid of is any window treatment that makes it especially difficult for you to get natural light.
"Window treatments should frame a space, but they don't have to be overbearing or heavy to add warmth," Santulli told Insider. "Using sheers or translucent metallics are a way to create some level of coverage without adding weight."
But if you still want to block the sun or have privacy, she suggests layering different window treatments to add dimension and texture to your space "while also allowing for more options to handle light and privacy."
Heavy or dark fabrics and finishings might weigh down your space.
Wool curtains might make your space feel dark. Shutterstock
Santulli told Insider that while it was once really popular "to use dark heavy fabrics and finishings to create warm sophisticated spaces," today these materials just make rooms feel "overbearing" and kind of gloomy.
Because of this, she said, you should consider swapping out thick wool curtains, and heavy blankets for "lush textures and warm-colored accents" that can help to elevate your space instead of dragging it down.
Accent walls aren't as stylish as they once were.
You may want to hang a mirror instead. Shutterstock
Rasmussen said that although accent walls can add a big statement to a space, you should be careful about how you use them because of how easily they can look dated.
She suggested that instead of committing to designing a whole wall you simply create a decorative focal point by using easy-to-remove pieces like art, plants, or a mirror.
If there's a chair rail in your dining room, consider removing it to make your space look bigger.
In some spaces, the rail can look awkward. Shutterstock
Iantha Carley, the owner of Iantha Carley Interiors, told Insider that the chair rail is a "puny strip of wood" that doesn't do much beyond awkwardly splitting a room in half, thus making the entire space look smaller.
To open up your space, she suggests removing the railing and opting for "plain walls or a more substantial wainscoting" for a much larger design impact.
If most of the pieces of furniture in your home are a version of stained wood, you might want to switch some of them out.
There's perhaps such a thing as too much stained wood. Shutterstock
When most of the furniture you own is wood-stained, it can start to look a bit "drab and dreary," said Suzan Wemlinger, the principal interior designer at Suzan J Designs.
"You should mix things up a bit — not only with the wood species and stain colors, but take it a step or two further and bring in some painted pieces as well as some non-wood pieces," she said.
Rugs that are too small for your space can make your room look awkward.
Some designers say this can make your room look cheap. Shutterstock
It doesn't matter how nice your rug is — if it's too small for the room, you should probably get rid of it, according to Wemlinger.
"Having a rug off-scale in a room — no matter how fine the rug is or how nice the furniture is — makes a room look cheap," she told Insider. "A rug under a dining table looks great, unless it's so small that the dining chairs don't fit on the rug or only fit when the chairs are pushed in."
Builder-grade tile and backsplashes can come off as dated and boring.
You might want to swap out your bathroom's tiles, especially if you want to resell your home. Shutterstock
"This is standard in many homes built within the last 20 years," Wemlinger said. "Usually basic beige porcelain or ceramic tile is typically used for all the floors, backsplashes, shower, and tub surroundings."
She added: "All the tile in a home should not be the same. It may make it easy for potential buyers to visualize their things in the home, but there is no personality in that."
She said you might want to try using different materials or shapes to switch up your space and make the tiles feel more updated.
If your TV is above your fireplace, you might want to consider moving it.
The fireplace should be a focal point. Shutterstock
Though the space above a fireplace might be a popular place to hang your TV, Kesha Franklin, an interior designer at Halden Interiors, told Insider that's a big no-no.
"One of my big design pet peeves is placing the TV above the fireplace," Franklin said. "The fireplace place is a focal point in a room. I say get rid of the TV and enjoy a moment by the fire without the distraction of a screen."
Fake plants and real plants that haven't been properly cared for don't have a place in most spaces.
Artificial plants might cheapen the look of your home. Shutterstock
"Having a beautiful pop of greenery in your home design can definitely make a statement and be a way to bring the outdoors in, but a faux plant can become a dust magnet," Franklin said. "Depending on the quality, it can cheapen the overall look and feel of your home."
That said, real plants can be even worse if they're dying or dead because they signal a "lack of care for your space and sometimes can produce an odor, which is unpleasant," she said.
Matching couch sets could appear dated and make your space feel like a furniture showroom.
When you're shopping for furniture, there's no need to buy sets that perfectly match. Shutterstock
Carley told Insider that you should consider swapping out some pieces if you have a matching sofa and love seat.
In many cases, these matching sets can appear dated or so matchy-matchy that your space looks like a furniture showroom.
"Go for a tailored look and replace the love seat with two comfortable upholstered chairs," she advised.
Inside minimalism and tidying are the makings of a seismic shift in American consumerism
On a recent Saturday afternoon in downtown Chicago, Tara Latta's 36th-floor apartment with stunning river views is a complete mess.
I'm watching the 39-year-old trying to jam the contents of a storage unit into her new one bedroom, and it doesn't appear to be going well. Latta's kitchen table is teeming with CVS receipts, unused thank-you notes, catalogs, utility bills and to-do lists. U-Haul boxes are stacked halfway to the ceiling. The counters are overflowing with tea cups, mixing bowls and water bottles.
But all is not as it seems. Latta is in the midst of her second of three, five-hour sessions with tidying consultant Kristyn Ivey. One of the first steps Ivey demands of her clients is to bare all. That means all the stuff-even old underwear-gets laid out in full sight, and then she gets to work. The former chemical engineer, who charges about $100 an hour, promises to clean up people's homes-and much more.
"This is about confronting yourself and learning about the things that you keep around you," Ivey said. "This is more than an organization strategy."
Ivey is a disciple of Marie Kondo. For the uninitiated, Kondo, also known as KonMari, is the tidying guru and best-selling author who debuted a hit Netflix show a year ago that catapulted her from cult following into the mainstream. Kondo has said she became obsessed with order as a kid-reportedly organizing bookshelves during recess-and after one freak-out over what to throw away had a breakthrough: What she really should be doing is keeping the things that make her happy.
That evolved into Kondo's "spark joy" gospel that's now being spread by nearly 400 certified consultants like Ivey, who had her own come-to-Kondo moment when she parted ways with $300 worth of clothes that still had the tags on. She left her job at consultant Booz Allen Hamilton and three years ago started For The Love of Tidy (tag line: "Tidy your home, change your life").
Ivey found a willing devotee in Latta, who is paying $1,350 for 15 hours of consulting. Latta is fresh off a solo hiking trip in Sedona, Arizona, where she practiced her new ethos of buying less stuff and purchased only a couple things. For Christmas, she focused on experiences instead of physical gifts, including tickets on a replica of the Polar Express for two nieces.
This purge is "kind of like when you go into therapy," Latta says. "This has been giving me the tools to have a process to really face this stuff and really design a life that I enjoy."
Latta is a recent convert to a growing tribe of Americans who are rejecting the post-WWII consumerism that served as the engine of the world's biggest economy. Consumer spending makes up about 70% of the U.S. economy, one of the world's highest rates, and it's even more crucial now that manufacturing has slowed.
But there are signs everywhere of people living stripped-down lives. It's not just KonMari: Reality TV is flooded with shows about tiny houses and saving money. More people are convinced they can live cheaply in their 20s and 30s, and then retire in their 40s-a movement that's been dubbed financial independence retire early, or FIRE.
Instead of buying stuff, consumers are opting to rent, with entire ecosystems built to lease everything from wardrobes to camping gear to toys. 2019 proved to be the year when the re-sale market mainstreamed to the point that buying used goods became OK for Christmas gifts.
Plaster all that with mounting anxiety about climate change and the environmental impact of consumption, including the packaging and miles from e-commerce deliveries, and you have the ingredients for a seismic shift, not just a short-lived trend. It would be more bad news for a struggling U.S. retail sector and a potential long-term threat to consumer spending, according to Michael Solomon, a marketing professor at Saint Joseph's University.
Americans are "moving away from pride of ownership, which has been a bedrock of our capitalist society," Solomon says. "It becomes more like: Use it and give it back, as opposed to own it forever."
Big retail has taken notice. Macy's is selling second-hand clothing at about 40 U.S. locations. Neiman Marcus bought a stake in an e-commerce company that sells pre-owned luxury handbags and other accessories. Meanwhile, malls are filling spaces once occupied by department stores and apparel chains with restaurants and trampoline gyms-another nod to the surging demand for experiences, not stuff.
To be sure, the average American was expected to increase Christmas spending by 4% this year with plans to shell out more than $1,000, according to the National Retail Federation's annual survey. But other data shows increasing dissatisfaction. In the U.S., 61% of people say they recently received at least one unwanted gift, according to personal finance website Finder.com. Clothes and household wares top the list.
I was intrigued watching Ivey help Latta achieve her goal to "eliminate as much paper as possible" and create a clear, cozy environment. Bloomberg paid for her to come to my four-bedroom house, which I share with my husband and three young kids, for a two-hour session. But I was skeptical because I already considered myself a minimalist of sorts: We're constantly donating to Goodwill, and I've never been shy about re-gifting.
Ivey arrived with a pair of indoor gray flats to slip on, a nice courtesy during a slushy winter day, and a small backpack with a label maker for tagging containers. We started at the kitchen table where we open the "The Tidy Home Joy Journal," her own creation that she sells for $9.99 on Amazon and her website. In the "Visualizing Your Best Life" section, I write down that I want to spend more time with family and being outdoors.
That leads us to home in on holiday decor and my closet. I find a candle and two pairs of stretch pants that I hadn't worn in at least a year to ditch. A heart-covered candy bowl, a hand-me-down from my mom, was added to the list. Throughout, Ivey emphasizes being positive. She discourages using words like "junk" or "mess" because even the discarded should be honored. It sounds a little silly at first, but even a few weeks later I find myself treating my things with more care and thought. It seems like a good practice to pass down to my kids.
But this isn't just about throwing stuff away. Ivey suggested rolling socks sushi style, instead of balling them, which can stretch out the elastic. She recommended cutting off store tags from all household goods and clothing to "make them yours." This even includes peeling those super sticky labels off Sterilite storage bins (she's equipped with a special little tool to do just that).
In the end, the biggest takeaway-or maybe breakthrough-from my certified KonMari tidying is the ceremonial release of an item. It should be treated with respect and thanked for its service in your life, Ivey says. After more reflection, I think about how my daughter likes decorating for holidays, even smaller ones like Valentine's Day.
So that candy dish with the hearts is staying.
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