Three Things You Didn’t Know About Accessibility

While today’s business leaders face mounting pressure to make their websites and mobile apps accessible, many still think accessibility is a niche problem that’s too hard or expensive to solve. Here are three facts about accessibility you might not know.

One could argue the Internet was built on the concept of access — access to information, entertainment, and each other. 

And yet, nearly 40 years after the official birth of the Internet, its descendants (the web, the mobile web, apps, and the Internet of Things) are still largely inaccessible to a sizable portion of the population. 

So, why the disconnect? 

Historically, businesses haven’t prioritized accessibility because it was a problem that seemed (and often was) too niche, too expensive, too complicated, and too time-consuming to tackle.

But the times, and technology, have changed. Today, business leaders who deprioritize accessibility may do so with outdated assumptions and incorrect information.

Let’s set the record straight with three things you might not have known about accessibility.

1. Accessibility benefits everyone 

Perhaps the most significant unspoken truth about accessibility is that we all need it. When we design with disabilities in mind, everyone benefits. 

Consider the Curb-Cut EffectOpens a new window , aptly named by Angela Glover Blackwell, who noted that when laws, programs, and systems are designed to serve a vulnerable group, society benefits overall. Blackwell discusses the phenomenon of city curbs cut to provide a ramp for people in wheelchairs. While designed with wheelchair users in mind, “cut curbs” are now used by most people. Sloping curbs serve caregivers with strollers, delivery people with hand trucks, cyclists, skateboarders, and a much broader slice of the people than those in wheelchairs. 

We must stop thinking about disability as an “us vs. them” issue; it affects all of us. In addition to the 15%Opens a new window of the global population living with permanent disabilities, studies show that approximately 5%Opens a new window of working Americans experience short-term disability (six months or less) every year. 

One might say that everybody is disabled, at least temporarily, at some point in their life. Creating a more inclusive and accessible world, online and off, helps us all.

2. Testing is happening now on the public

Want to know the dirty little secret of digital accessibility testing? If it’s not happening before builds are released, it’s happening right now—on you. 

When companies think they can’t afford the teams and time required to code and test for accessibility, sites and mobile apps are released to the public and checked later in a manual audit.

What typically happens is that dev teams will do what they can—some lightweight coding and manual checks. Then, the build is live and either works for an individual end-user or doesn’t. Unfortunately, the latter is far more common than you might think.

The WebAIM Million projectOpens a new window evaluates the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 websites, and in 2022, the project detected 50,829,406 distinct accessibility errors. That’s an average of 50 errors per page! 

While WebAIM is looking for all errors, large and small, our work focuses on finding critical bugs that truly block access, and we regularly find more than ten critical bugs per page on major US company websites. 

The reason is twofold: 

1. Until recent breakthroughs with automation and AI technology, the process has been primarily manual, which is time-intensive and requires highly skilled subject experts.
2. Traditional accessibility testing tools leverage static syntax analysis, which provides adequate coverage in a world of static web properties. But today’s websites are much more dynamic. In contrast, manual testing can catch what syntax analysis can’t; manual testing can’t scale to match the pace of rapid releases. 

According to GoogleOpens a new window , the number of companies adopting on-demand deployment (with code releases multiple times a day) has tripled in the last three years. While a lengthy and cumbersome manual audit could catch all of these problems, it would take so long that release schedules would effectively grind to a halt.

The reality is that the process could be better. 

Isn’t it time to do better than release sites and apps to the public who may or may not be able to navigate and engage with them? We think so.

See More: Exploring the Role of AI and ML in the Evolution of Software Testing

3. Good News! Accessibility testing is easier than you think

There really is good news here: new automation tools mean the future of accessibility testing is brighter than ever.

In the past, automation took too long to implement and needed to be more robust. Since new tech hit the scene in 2021, automation tools now take minutes to set up, catch, sort, and report critical bugs.

Of course, automation is not a silver bullet, but it can make human experts more productive. Leveraging the proper technology to automate what can and should be automated empowers subject matter experts to focus on more nuanced tasks and do more meaningful work. 

Take, for example, Capital One has long invested in creating digitally accessible experiences and initially relied on traditional testing software, subject matter experts, and manual reviews to ensure their sites were accessible. The problem came when their release frequency accelerated. Fortunately, the latest technology has enabled Capital One to slash the testing time for its entire public-facing footprint from 3-4 weeks to just hours.  

Speed, powerful automated bug-finding capability, and easy integration into a product development process without slowing it down. That hasn’t been available until now.

See More: How Product Developers Can Build Technology Humans Can Use

Bonus Point: It’s Not Just about Your Website – it’s Every Touchpoint

The last thing to keep in mind about accessibility is it’s not just your website. Everyone that comes into contact with your business, regardless of how they do it or which channel they come through, needs an accessible experience. 

Think of your company’s touchpoints for all the people who keep your organization going—are your customers, employees, and vendors able to navigate your public-facing website and mobile app, as well as your internal website, internal software, marketing materials, and brick-and-mortar store?

While auditing and updating every touchpoint for accessibility can be daunting, it is doable. We see companies like Microsoft adopting policies to work with accessible-only vendors and applaud their efforts, knowing this is an ongoing process.

And it’s a critical one. People with disabilities are not a monolith. It’s not “us against them” or “their needs versus our needs.” It’s everyone needing as much access as possible. It’s centering the most vulnerable so that everyone wins.

The right tools finally exist to create a more inclusive and accessible digital world. That’s an opportunity for us all, and we shouldn’t miss it.

Do you think accessibility is a niche problem that’s too hard or expensive to solve? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .

Image Source: Shutterstock

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