181. How do you make an accessible website? (f. Sapir Yarden)
Worried about being sued for lacking accessibility? 👩⚖️ This episode will address all your fears. Hosts Phil and Lauren meet with Sapir from accessiBe to talk about the importance, ramifications, and goodness of being accessible online. We talk about how much you could be sued for, why accessiBe is a great solution, and why it’s important for your brand to be inclusive for everyone. This episode is fun, and we hope you’ll learn a lot as well!
Episode transcription
Phil
Hey listener before we dive into this episode, which you're absolutely going to love, I know I learned a ton, we're going to be talking about accessibility. Specifically, I'm going to be sharing my favorite tool for this to accomplish this as a overlay on your website, it's called accessiBe. I have a feeling after listening to this you're gonna want to check this tool out. So feel free to use this link philp.al/accessibe that's philp.al/accessibe be spelled A C C E S S I B E. You're going to love it. Now onto the show.
Phil
Okay, So picture this. You've got a brand new brand and website and you're so excited to share it with the world. I know this feeling.
Lauren
But then, you get sued for having a website that isn't accessible.
Phil
Oh, I mean, this might seem like a dramatic story. But guess what, friends, this is the reality that we live in.
Lauren
In today's episode of Brand Therapy we meet with Sapir from accessiBe to give you all the info you need to know about creating an accessible website.
Phil
This episode is not sponsored by them it's just a tool that I really like. And I love Sapir as well she's going to give us the dish. Let's get started.
Well, this is a conversation you're going to be happy you're listening to it's a fairly new, I guess priority of ours. I'm not proud to admit a new priority because it should have been a priority from a while ago. But I guess I've just really, in my mind shifted to knowing and appreciating how important this is right now the topic of accessibility on your website. Now before I just throw over and welcome Sapir onto the podcast. Welcome to Brand Therapy. I guess I just did it. I said I was going to did it in the moment welcome.
Lauren
You make rules, and then you immediately break them, classic.
Phil
Welcome Sapir.
Sapir
Thank you very much. I'm so excited to be part of this conversation.
Phil
You have a great personality. We know that because we've already had a call with you. You work for a great company and a great platform that I'm very proud to tell people about. My challenge with making accessible websites over the last few years has been navigating what are a lot of requirements and considerations to make sure a website is accessible to absolutely everyone, at times limiting a lot of design decisions that we can make. When I discovered accessiBe, I had this aha moment and went wait a second, I can actually just install a plugin that takes care of this for me, literally the flick of a switch. And we're considering what someone with ADHD needs. We're considering what someone with a whole variety of needs and disabilities etc. might need. It was this moment for me that was so cool. I went wow, actually, I can design what I need to design and accessiBe helps with everything else. And it felt freeing.
Sapir
I love that you said that freeing. I mean, I felt lighter when I found out that this was even something that we need to incorporate into our world. But because it's so intuitive website accessibility, what does that even mean until you realize that most websites are not accessible. And I think that aha moment happened to so many people who decided to come work for this amazing company. And I think a lot of us are really proud of the mission, which is basically taking technology, which we're all familiar with, at this point AI and machine learning, those are common jargon words that we use in our day to day, but taking that and applying it to a population in our society that might not have the ability to interact with our most commonly used technical resource or technology to be able to be, you know, as equal as everyone else.
And when we're talking about website accessibility, yes, there are so many different requirements of what it takes to make a website accessible. Our solution does address all of them. But it's part of what we would like to think of as an accessibility strategy. You need to start somewhere, because most developers aren't building this in from the beginning and the result is that 98 to 97% of websites are inaccessible. And so we're really playing catch up right now. We really want to make sure that people are aware of this topic to begin with, so that we can roll out the right solutions, the right products, the right offerings for them to understand how they can simply make their website accessible or how they can start doing the work about this. And our solution is really intuitive for anyone both in terms of the implementation of it, but also on the user's end to make sure that they know how they can modify the experience to make any sort of website accessible and then more importantly, inclusive.
Lauren
Okay, I'm going to start off with a very, very, very dramatic question because I feel like we need to set the stakes here. We need people to understand that there are risks to not considering accessibility. So, worst case scenario, what could happen to you if you have a website that is not accessible?
Sapir
Okay, my worst case scenario is that someone can't use your website. That's pretty awful because you're building a website with the intention of everyone being able to use it, whether it's a business or not. But more so the legal risk is really what people are afraid of, because you can actually be sued for having an inaccessible website. And we see that as the primary driver of why this industry is getting so much information and so many new, I guess, leads or something like that.
Lauren
I love that you answered with the first one, though, because you're right, when you make a website, the goal is that people can enjoy it. And not everyone can enjoy it in the exact same way. And so leading with inclusivity, on your site is also a really positive reflection of your brand and what your online presence stands for.
Phil
Absolutely. To contradict that, and this is actually controversial and I normally keep this opinion to myself, I have really struggled internally with and I've had conversations with colleagues about this peers of mine that have drastically changed their websites and their brand colors and just a lot about their brands in ways that I might feel, make it more generic and make it less dynamic. And in some cases, visually, their brands just, they don't look as good. And I get the move to make your website accessible. But I really struggled with the limitations that this put on me in design. I can't just make only accessible designs, I can't necessarily satisfy 100% of the audience and create a brand that stands out, I guess is what I'm saying.
Sapir
You're not going to satisfy 100% of the customers 100% of the time, it’s just never going to happen. So we're taking the second guessing out of your hands and essentially saying, build the type of design you want to have on your website, you as a web developer, you as a designer, you as a brand, want to create something that's special that stands out and invites people to you. But if that's not going to be accessible, at least you have a tool on your website that can allow the user to make it accessible and easy to use for their needs, whatever that might be.
Phil
Can you feel like the ease now in my voice, I'm like, much calmer. I just, it was seriously a light bulb moment for me when I thought, wow, we can put on this overlay. And I actually love the physical changes that it makes on the site. And it makes me feel happy that I have a brand, either my own or one that I've designed for a client that looks and feels like that person, but then there's this added layer, you know, features. This sounds like a sponsored episode, but it's absolutely not. This is not a sponsored episode. I'm just genuinely interested in this topic, and I feel like our listeners need to know about this, because the ramifications are real, the possibility of a lawsuit as a result of your website not being accessible are real. So that's why we're talking about this. I just thought I should add that.
Lauren
Well, before we get into the nuts and bolts of what makes success would be great. Could we like back up and just talk about what web accessibility is? What does that mean, and who does it impact?
Sapir
I think when we're talking about website accessibility, it means that your website is intuitively inclusive to any type of user. That anyone can come in, they'll know what the website is about content wise even, they'll know how to reach the resources that they need, and they'll be able to use it just as anyone else can. Now the definitions of how an exact accessible website might look like, is a bit iffy, because we go according to the guidelines set by an international standards organization called the W3C or the World Wide Web Consortium. And they wrote out this guidebook that has all of the requirements listed, but it's pretty dense, it's difficult to follow, especially if you're not technical. So we've consolidated that down. But the issue is that most governments around the world haven't necessarily defined themselves what an accessible website looks like. And that's where the issue with the lawsuits comes in, because anyone can sue anyone over an inaccessible website, but you need to have the documentation to prove how you've done it. And so that's where our solution comes in, because it addresses those requirements and allows the user to have that modular activity as well.
Lauren
Great. And when we're saying inclusive to any type of user, correct me if I'm wrong or expand on that, but that can include people who are visually impaired, that can include neurodiverse individuals of all types, that can include using a variety of different devices, is there anything I'm missing there?
Sapir
I think that that's a really great start. But what's really nuanced about this whole field is that we're not even talking about, let's say, temporary disability. What happens if you have LASIK, and you can't see your screen for a few days? What happens if you broke your arm and you can't use your mouse? So you need to rely on your keyboard to navigate a website? What about being part of the aging population, and that's where visual impairments come across again, or even making sure that the content is accessible. Those are all elements that a user can come in and modify on their experience when they come to your website.
Phil
Fascinating, isn't it?
Lauren
Cool? Yeah.
Phil
If anyone wants to see this in action, I'm very proud to have this on my website, really, I mean, it makes me feel really good that I have this icon in the bottom left corner of my website. It's a universal icon that represents accessibility. I have accessiBe, that's the plugin that I use, and that's where Sapir works. Go there, right now, if you're on your mobile device, or your desktop, and you can see, literally, it's as easy as toggling on settings that apply to you seizure, safe, vision impaired, ADHD, friendly, cognitive disability, keyboard navigation, there are so many things here, alignment, adjusting line height, I mean, it's just absolutely genius. I don't want the job of the person that had to go through that guidebook, by the way, that's 1000 pages long to figure out how to be fully accessible. I'm glad someone on your team did that I would do that on that job.
Sapir
Yeah, we have a really growing team of engineers and r and d experts. And everyone here is really on board with the mission, which is what's so great is that we're expanding and that we can really take it to the next level and continue to improve so that the widget isn't the only solution that we're offering. We also have a dashboard for developers to learn how to code for accessibility from the source so that this doesn't even become an afterthought in the future. We also offer other services such as users testing, where people with disabilities will actually go through different scenarios on a website and be able to test out whether or not they are accessible. We can also offer other certifications, there's a really full gamut of things that we can offer here. And I think all of that is trying to say that we're this one stop shop for anything accessibility, and we're really going in that direction as well.
One of the nuances I wanted to add into the widget, and what it can offer is that if someone has a color blindness, they can even go so far as adjusting the color of the text or the background on the website, so if they are colorblind to green, they can adjust her brand and vice versa and play around with it as they see fit. You can really go wild with some of the customizations. I've done some demos where I really just made websites look insane, like no one would want to use them. But at least you can prove how far it can go.
Lauren
Wow, I've always wondered how excessively uses images or interprets images. So if someone is visually impaired, and there's a photo on the website, what happens?
Sapir
If you are a visually impaired user and you have a screen reader, that's a technology that enables you to have basically text to voice and can tell you what is happening on the screen. So if you activate that screen reader mode, and there's not an all tag on the image, you can create one automatically and it scans the image interprets it and gives you the answer immediately.
Lauren
Wow, that's incredible.
Phil
I have another example that I remember from our call Sapir, which was my motivator of oh my god, we need to turn this into a podcast episodes is so valuable for people. A review on a restaurant a screen reader might say star, star, star star star, but accessiBe’s AI will recognize that it's a rating and it will say five star rating for example.
Lauren
Amazing, amazing. Now, I know accessiBe through Squarespace world because that's we build all of our client websites on Squarespace and Phil has used accessiBe on his own site. Is accessiBe exclusively for Squarespace or can be used on other sites too?
Sapir
No,so we integrate with any website that will accept JavaScript. So that really allows us to be as accessible also to the world of content management systems. And so any website can really implement this.
Phil
And if you don't have a website that accepts JavaScript, honey, you got bigger problems. It’s 2023.
Lauren
You might as well have, a piece of paper.
Sapir
Exactly. Right.
Lauren
Is there anything else that people should know about being accessible online?
Sapir
I want to say there's three different reasons that people will come to us. One is because they let's call it the three buckets of why someone will come looking for an accessibility solution. One is litigation, either they've been sued or fear of being sued will drive them to address this for their business. The other is branding, they see the value in having an inclusive website, and they want to do good. And they want to make sure that their customers can also feel good. People with disabilities are about 20% of the population, they have a massive purchasing power in our society, and if we neglect including them, then you're really missing out. And that's really where the third bucket is, which is revenue. You want to make sure that you could also build your business as much as you can. Why would you exclude any segment of the population from being able to purchase your services? Those are my answers.
Phil
I love it. They're great answers.
Lauren
Brilliant.
Sapir
Can I add more?
Lauren
Yeah.
Sapir
I mean, honestly, the conversation that I had right before this, I had a meeting with someone who manages websites, all in the restaurant field. Ten percent of his restaurants got hit with a lawsuit. And so now he's playing catch up in the most intense stage, because all of his clients are upset. And he also had to go address this with all of remaining clients, and before they get sued, so that they can find a proactive solution for themselves. So I think the education about why website accessibility is so important, just from the doing good side is where I come in. And I love talking about this, and how great our company is, and all the partnerships that we do with nonprofits in our community. But the legality issue is really the biggest driver.
Lauren
And you know, I haven't heard this, but I feel and suspect that individuals believe accessibility is kind of like a trend right now, everyone wants an accessible website, but I don't need to participate in that trend. I'm just gonna wait for it to blow over. But, it's not going anywhere. If anything, it's being dialed up and up and up. And so it just makes sense to beat the punch, so to speak of potentially getting hit with a lawsuit or losing a customer, especially if you could use a really affordable solution like accessiBe to kind of cover you. Right? Like accessibility is not a past trend, like it's here to stay.
Sapir
And that's where I have my point, thank you. Which is, it's not a nice to have, it's absolutely a must have, to the extent that privacy policies and SSL certificates were not required years ago. And now they're absolute must haves. If you don't have that, just like we said, you might as well have a piece of paper. So website accessibility really is veering into that space. And just like Phil said, it's 2023, what are we doing? You want to have an inaccessible website? Why?
PHil
I shifted my thinking about this. Initially, when I first discovered the tool, I thought, Oh, it feels a little pricey as a subscription. But now I think of it more as insurance in some respect, right? I mean, right, you have to pay for insurance for protection. And this, to me is no different. It's the online version of that.
Sapir
Well, there's a cost benefit analysis here, which is our solution is working automatically to remediate a website, it does a daily scan of the website to make sure that all elements, whether they're old or updated regularly are accessible. But the alternative is that you would go in and make those remediations on your own in your time. So it's an investment of time of money. It's Labor inducing. Absolutely. So there's a choice here that can be made. And of course, going through the code manually, it's great. But if you do need to get to that point where you have an accessible solution where you're demonstrating your branding, and that you're inclusive, by having that widget already on your website, that's a really safe bet in terms of having an insurance policy, but also just proving that you're really aligned with the values that you represent.
Phil
Great point.
Lauren
I guess maybe we'll cap this off with another dramatic question from yours truly. Do you know how much a lawsuit could be for if you aren't accessible? What numbers have you heard?
Sapir
Oh, I've heard anywhere from $5,000 to over 60k. Last week, I spoke with a client who got sued for $45,000 on a website that has less than 10,000 viewers per month.
Phil
Not trying to scare anyone, but this is real stuff. This is why we've turned it into a podcast. Yeah, this is serious stuff. This isn't a light suggestion that I guess I've come to that realization super recently, and also feel responsible to give this option to my clients and in turn sharing it with our listeners just to create some urgency and also just a little nudge to be proactive about this. I think if you haven't hopped on this yet, you are a little bit behind, but there's an easy solution to get caught up.
Lauren
Mm hmm. And it's also important to think about how your business is perceived online. Doesn't everyone want to seem like a brand that that anyone in the world could engage with?
Sapir
I agree with that. That's why I'm here. That's why a lot of my colleagues are here. I think at the end of the day, it's just about using technology to do good and if we can improve even in the slightest bit, and really reach that mission of making the entire internet accessible, we're going to do what it has to take. And it's exciting. It's a really exciting field because there's constantly new adaptations of the technology. We're looking forward to new guidelines coming out or a new integration of the guidelines coming out in the coming year. The Department of Justice is looking to create some regulation around this as well. So like I said before, it's not a nice to have, it's going to be a must have, and it's going to be enforced more and more in the future. So we definitely want to start with that education about hey, you need to have an accessible website. Let's take it from there.
Phil
Thank you Sapir, you've made a very compelling case today on why people need to hop on board. We've mentioned accessiBe in this episode. If you guys are interested in checking it out, I do have a referral link. I mean, you heard it here first. So go ahead and use it it does mean that we make a small commission on that. But that link is philp.al/accessibe which is A C C E S S I B E. Sapir, thank you for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy. It really has been a pleasure.
Sapir
Thank you so much, Phil and Lauren. It's been so much fun talking to you guys. Can't wait for our next conversation.
Phil
I look forward to it too.
Thank you Sapir, that was a great conversation. We felt so enlightened by this. I hope that you feel the same way. Listen, you know the drill, if you enjoyed this episode, let us know find us on social media, hashtag brand therapy, we keep an eye on there. And if you really enjoyed it, then take a few extra minutes to give us a review five star, five star that helps other people discover the episodes that we work hard to create for you. And until next time, thanks for hanging out with us on Brand Therapy. We'll see you next time.
