Accessible design means considering the preferences, needs, and expectations of users with disabilities.
It’s about designing products that work for everyone, regardless of the technologies or techniques that they use to interact with the internet.
Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses to provide accessible digital resources, and the number of ADA web lawsuits continues to rise each year. Other laws like the European Accessibility Act establish additional requirements for businesses — but an estimated 96.3% of the internet’s top 1 million websites have detectable accessibility issues.
Your business needs a digital accessibility strategy. And accessibility isn’t just about compliance — it’s about expanding your reach.
Read on to learn more about Blue Stingray’s approach to digital accessibility auditing and remediation. To discuss options for your business, contact us.
An Accessible Website Helps Your Business Grow
About 25% of U.S. adults live with some form of disability. When websites aren’t built with accessibility in mind, businesses miss an opportunity to make engaging connections with their users.
And since the best practices of inclusive design are aligned with the best practices of web design, each accessibility improvement can benefit all users:
- Adding alternative text to images benefits users with vision limitations, but also improves experiences for people who browse with slow internet connections. Alternative text also improves search engine optimization (SEO).
- Appropriate use of semantic HTML aids screen readers (which output text as audio) and other assistive technologies. It’s also great for SEO.
- Appropriate color contrast makes text more readable for people with certain vision disabilities such as color vision deficiency (also called color blindness). High-contrast text is also easier to read in bright ambient light.
WCAG: The Rulebook for Digital Accessibility
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is published by the World Wide Web Consortium — the same organization that publishes standards for HTML, CSS, and other internet essentials.
WCAG addresses the most common barriers that impact people who have disabilities. By auditing your content against WCAG, you can improve experiences for all users (and enhance compliance with the ADA and other laws).
Blue Stingray provides comprehensive audits using the Level AA standards of the latest version of WCAG. Here’s how it works:
- We utilize advanced accessibility-specific artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze your content and identify potential WCAG conformance issues.
- An accessibility expert reviews the output for false negatives and false positives.
- Human accessibility testers analyze your content for WCAG failures that cannot be identified with automation alone.
- Blue Stingray’s developers create a detailed remediation strategy.
- We work closely with your team to help you create a long-term, self-sustainable approach.
By combining automation with manual review and remediation, we provide a comprehensive solution for digital accessibility.
Accessibility Remediation with Enterprise Experience
Blue Stingray’s team has decades of combined experience with eCommerce platforms, mobile app architectures, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, and we leverage that experience to address each barrier as effectively as possible — delivering solutions that prioritize the experiences of real-life users.
At Blue Stingray, Accessibility Isn’t an Afterthought
We’re committed to following the best practices of accessibility, and we’ve prioritized inclusive design from day one.
Our goal is to create engaging digital products that work for every type of user. Whether your brand is building a new mobile app, refreshing its website, or establishing a long-term strategy for ADA compliance, we’re ready to help.