Don’t let poor website accessibility compliance haunt you… Learn how to conquer your fears around website accessibility projects in this on-demand Lumar webinar!
Our expert a11y guests will walk you through the pitfalls of ignoring website accessibility — including some of the most notable digital accessibility lawsuits — and will show you how your business can avoid similar a11y horror stories with actionable web accessibility tips.
Webinar speakers:
- Gryff Coates — Software Engineering Manager at Skyscanner
- Billie Geena Hyde — Web Accessibility Advocate & Founder of Uptake Agency
- (Webinar Host) Chris Spann — Senior Technical SEO at Lumar & Host of the Human-First Digital Podcast
Watch the full webinar session (including Q&A) on-demand above, or read on for our top takeaways.
Webinar Recap:
Why businesses need to ensure their websites are accessible
According to Gryff Coates, software engineering manager at Skyscanner, around 30% of people have some kind of accessibility need.
The spectrum of access needs that people have is massive and varied, covering everything from people who have permanent physical ailments to glasses-wearers who might occasionally find they need to navigate a website without their specs. Much of online accessibility is discussed in terms of technological aids, such as screen readers, but there is much more to consider when thinking about web access.
“It’s so important that we think about it as a wider problem, and it’s so far-reaching, especially with our aging populations at the moment,” Coates says.
Ensuring everyone can access your website is, of course, simply the ethically correct thing to do if you want to help your fellow humans. But if that’s not reason enough for your business or organization’s stakeholders to finally take accessibility seriously, then consider the monetary and risk-avoidance benefits of building more accessible websites:
- Reach more potential customers
- Avoid lawsuits and fines
Coates also highlights that incorporating a higher standard for accessibility across your company is good for employees, too.
“For your own employees, making your own company accessible and your own products accessible internally can boost their productivity and allow them to tap their potential,” he adds.
Web accessibility compliance landscape
Legislation and regulation today can vary from region to region, country to country, and even province to province. Some accessibility regulations are well-established, like the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), and some are yet to be fully implemented, like the European Accessibility Act (EAA), which will be enforced starting in 2025.
“The EAA is becoming a thing in about a year’s time – so get this stuff into your dev queues now,” suggests Lumar’s host, Chris Spann.
Coates notes: “The slide we’ve got here is very Western-centric, but they’re not the only places [incorporating new A11y rules] … China is also introducing a lot of legislation to allow for accessibility, and India is facing a more mature economy and an aging population—and Japan has a massively aging population.”
“All these countries are either going through — or starting to think about — legislation around accessibility. So the problem is only going to get bigger and bigger for companies that don’t follow [accessibility best practices].”
Our panel agrees that the time to ensure your website adheres to accessibility legislation is now. After all, why risk legal action down the line when you can be proactive today?
Businesses also need to consider the law in places beyond where they operate currently – especially as they seek to expand into other worldwide markets.
WCAG accessibility standards
Much of the existing web accessibility legislation is rooted in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards.
If you’re looking for a place to start with your a11y compliance journey, review the four main WCAG principles for web accessibility, which state that websites should be:
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
WCAG has three levels of adherence:
- Level A (the lowest level)
- Level AA (the level generally needed for legislation compliance)
- Level AAA (the highest level)
“The main thing to take away is that Level AA is the level you want to go towards,” says Coates, “That’s the one that a lot of legislation is set up to, and that’s kind of the gold standard within the tech industry for websites. Triple A is the icing on top.”
Web accessibility horror stories
Our speakers highlight a few web accessibility horror stories that highlight why businesses shouldn’t ignore a11y standards:
- General ignorance from business owners
- Missed market opportunities
- Costly lawsuits
Ignorance and discrimination from business owners
An accessibility horror story shared by web consultant Billie Geena Hyde comes down to the general ignorance she’s witnessed, including a client who sold tools like chainsaws asking, “Why would I want blind people buying chainsaws?”
This response shocked Hyde, who reminded us that blindness is a massive spectrum with a wide range of severity. Secondly, she notes, these customers might be buying products for others. There is simply no reason to lag behind on e-commerce accessibility based on your own judgment about who ‘should’ use your products.
Coates also points out that consumers who might be turned off by an inaccessible site will most likely take their business to a competitor that adheres better to WCAG.
“Why would you exclude someone?” Coates asks. “Why wouldn’t you want to treat that person as human and allow them to use all the products that you have? And, on the other side, they also have money. And if you don’t treat them right and someone else does, they’re obviously going to go for them.”
Missing out on £17.1 billion a year by ignoring accessibility
Spann points out some facts from the Click-Away Pound report on digital accessibility for online shoppers that should be frightening for businesses who want to increase their sales:
- 69% of disabled users click away from websites that they find difficult to use
- 83% of participants with access needs limit their shopping to websites that they know are accessible
- 86% have chosen to pay more for a product from an accessible site.
Retailers who ignore website accessibility risk losing a large number of customers by not checking that their online shopping experience works for everyone.
“These could be problems that stop conversions,” says Hyde, “These could be problems that mean we don’t get to checkout, or we don’t get return customers.”
“It’s everyone’s responsibility to identify [accessibility] issues,” she says, “Whether it’s the designer, developer, the SEO.”
Costly web accessibility lawsuits
There are plenty of examples of lawsuits relating to poor web accessibility. Our panelists highlight just a few of these that you may want to bring to your stakeholders’ attention, if you’re trying to communicate the risks related to digital accessibility compliance.
A11y lawsuits relating to websites that are inaccessible via screen reader technologies:
A11y lawsuits relating to lacking captions and the inability to access digital material and programming:
How to overcome website accessibility issues?
Key website accessibility categories to address
Review the WCAG guidelines as a starting point for the most current information regarding what aspects of your website need to be audited and improved to achieve better accessibility.
Spann calls out a list of several key areas to review for accessibility issues, and what WCAG ‘Level’ (A, AA, or AAA) provides guidance for these areas.
(Note: You can click through the list below to find some common a11y issues in each category, along with tips for resolving them.)
- ARIA – Level A and ARIA Best Practices
- Color – Level AA and Level AAA
- Forms – Level A and Level AA
- Keyboard – Level A and Keyboard Best Practices
- Language – Level A
- Name Role Value – Level A and Best Practices
- Parsing – Level A
- Semantics – Level AAA and Best Practices
- Sensory & Visual – Level AA and Best Practices
- Structure – Level A and Level AA
- Tables – Level A and Best Practices
- Text Alternatives – Level A and Alt Text Best Practices
- Time and Media – Level A
Website accessibility tools
If you’re working on a large website, chances are you’ll want a tool that can help you identify these issues quickly and at scale across the entire site.
That’s where the Lumar platform comes in. Our website crawler is built for large-scale websites and, with our built-in web accessibility metrics, can help you quickly identify sitewide a11y issues and save time with effective prioritization, fewer false positives, and automated QA testing aligned to WCAG levels A through AAA.
Maintaining a human touch
Even as accessibility compliance tech improves – with the rollout of AI for closed captioning, etc. – brands still need to make an effort to ensure that actual humans are testing and shaping them. For instance, automated captions are useful and certainly better than nothing, but they often do not yet match the quality level of closed captioning written by trained staff.
“Sometimes you do need that human approach to check it over,” Coates says. “The same with images. You need a human to interpret that alt text.” Automated image alt text can provide the wrong information to users if AI tools get it wrong — and depending on the image, there is a risk that this incorrect information could be dangerous or misleading.
Meet the Accessibility Experts
- Gryff Coates — Software Engineering Manager at Skyscanner
- Billie Geena Hyde — Web Accessibility Advocate & Founder of Uptake Agency
- (Host) Chris Spann — Senior Technical SEO at Lumar & Host of the Human-First Digital Podcast
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