If you champion digital accessibility, you’re bound to encounter some resistance. Regardless of your organization’s culture, people will want to avoid changing the way that they work —and while inclusivity has a host of benefits, it requires a commitment.
Fortunately, there’s really no strong argument against accessible design. With a bit of preparation, you can counter the misconceptions that prevent accessibility initiatives from taking off.
Here’s a look at four common myths about digital accessibility (and what you can say to steer your organization in the right direction).
1. "Accessibility is great, but we don't have customers with disabilities."
We’ve written quite a bit about this myth, because it’s easily the most common argument that we hear.
If your organization truly doesn’t have customers with disabilities, you need to ask yourself why. About 1 in 4 U.S. adults have some sort of disability, and those folks control an estimated $490 billion in disposable income. Ignoring those customers isn’t good business.
And those numbers are specific to people with long-term disabilities — the simple fact is that at some point, everyone experiences some sort of physical or sensory limitation. If you’ve ever had trouble reading a website while browsing in bright sunlight, you’ve had a temporary issue that changed the way you use the internet.
The best practices of digital accessibility can make websites and mobile apps more accessible for everyone, including people with situational or temporary limitations (and people who don’t have disabilities that affect their internet usage).
To learn more, read: We Haven't Received Customer Complaints About Accessibility, So We Don't Have a Problem, Right?
2. "There's no clear guidelines for ADA compliance, so digital accessibility is subjective."
This was partially true at one point, but it’s no longer the case. The Department of Justice has identified the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level AA as the de facto requirements for compliance with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The Justice Department also recommends following WCAG for Title III compliance (Title III applies to private businesses).
WCAG is also the basis for compliance with a number of international digital accessibility laws including:
- Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act
- European Union’s European Accessibility Act (EAA)
- Ireland’s Equal Status Acts 2000 to 2004
- Israel’s Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act
- South Korea’s Act on Welfare of Persons with Disabilities
- United Kingdom’s Equality Act of 2010
- Ontario, Canada’s Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)
WCAG is the rulebook for accessible design. It’s a straightforward document with clear rules, and it’s widely recognized as the standard for compliance — so if you’re ignoring WCAG, you’re taking a legal risk.
To learn more, read: Can You Get Sued for Having an Inaccessible Website?
3. "Our website is too complex to be accessible for every user."
It’s true that certain types of content cannot be equally accessible for everyone. If you’re creating a virtual reality (VR) app, for example, your app will rely on head movement, spatial audio, and visual cues. No matter what you do, some people will not be able to use all of the app’s features.
But the goal of accessible design isn’t to make everything perfectly accessible for every user; it’s to remove the unnecessary barriers that impact users with disabilities. The vast majority of websites and mobile apps can be made more accessible, even if they rely on audio or visual content.
And even if your digital product relies on sensory perception, you can still follow WCAG. The guidelines contain a number of exceptions specifically for those cases, so there’s no excuse for ignoring users with disabilities.
To learn more, read: Understanding WCAG Exceptions for Essential Functionality
4. "Following WCAG would mean redesigning everything from the ground up."
Digital accessibility is easy to implement when you’re designing a brand-new website, and focusing on accessibility from day one has enormous benefits. If you prioritize users with disabilities when developing your content, you can enjoy the full benefits of accessible design (and pay less over time).
But accessibility remediation is always an option. Many WCAG criteria can be met with basic tweaks that cost almost nothing to implement:
- Adding alternative text (alt text) takes only a few seconds and greatly improves the experience for non-visual users. Learn more about text alternatives for non-text content.
- Using appropriate HTML subheadings helps to convey the structure of content programmatically, which helps screen readers and other assistive software present the content to the user. Learn more about semantic HTML and web accessibility.
- Adjusting text colors to meet WCAG’s requirements for color contrast will improve readability, particularly for people with vision disabilities. Learn more about WCAG requirements for color contrast.
- Writing descriptive text for hyperlinks takes just as much time as writing inaccurate hyperlink text. Learn more about the importance of link text for accessibility and test color-pairs with AudioEye’s free color contrast checker.
AudioEye’s platform can remediate some accessibility issues automatically and provide guidance for fixing the problems that require human judgment. While some of those barriers will take some time and effort to fix, every improvement makes a difference — and regardless of the size of your organization, you have the resources to get started right away.
