California is a lawsuit hotspot: What every business needs to know about web accessibility

Welcome and Agenda

Sapir: Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us in your morning or afternoon or wherever you are in the world. Today, our focus is California as a website accessibility lawsuit hotspot and what every business needs to know. We’re going to learn about the different regulations that affect businesses that are working in or with California.

How courts are interpreting and enforcing compliance in the state. What’s at stake if your business is not accessible online and the benefits of it because there are a lot of benefits that we’re going to talk about today. So with that being said, I’m excited to get started. So this is our agenda for the day.

We’ll cover what is web accessibility and make sure that everyone is on the same page. I know that we have a lot of people who are interested in this and also a few customers who have come to enhance their knowledge. So we’re here to answer your questions as well. Feel free to use that function.

We’ll talk about the regulations and the legal landscape in California. Then we’ll cover WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – essentially the rulebook for making your website accessible and working toward conformance. We’ll touch on the benefits as well. And finally, we’ll go through a demo so you really get a sense of how our technology is working for your business.

For today’s session, my name is Sapir Yarden. I’m part of the marketing team here at accessiBe. And just anecdotally, I’ll share that I have started at the company about four years ago in our sales department. So I actually had a lot of conversations with different businesses who had different needs coming into the compliance space trying to understand what web accessibility is and what it means for them.

So this is a topic that is close to my heart and I’m excited to share more knowledge with you about that today. But before we do that, I’m excited to introduce my friend Kelley, who I actually met last month at a disability advocacy event in Washington DC. So, Kelly, I’ll let you introduce yourself.

Meet the Speakers

Kelley: Oh, you’re on mute. Thanks for that. Thank you. And hello everyone.

My name is Kelley Simoneaux. I’m an attorney based in Washington DC and I do a lot in the space of disability rights and disability advocacy and this issue is particularly important for me as a person who lives with a significant disability. When I was 16 years old I was a passenger in a car with a defective seat belt, and I became paralyzed in a second. I sustained a spinal cord injury and have been wheeling around life since then.

And so, that ultimately led me to finish high school and college, attend law school, and then open up my law firm, which now helps provide representation for people after spinal cord injuries, as well as help people navigate what disability rights look like and have a better understanding of the laws. So, I’m happy to be here today with you all.

What Is Web Accessibility?

Sapir: Thank you so much for that introduction. So, let’s dive right in. What is web accessibility? What does this mean?

Well, it’s the practice of ensuring that people with disabilities can effectively perceive, navigate, and interact with, or contribute to content on your website. So, if we’re thinking of different types of websites, whether that’s an e-commerce business where you want to check out from or complete a sign-up form, if it’s an electric utility bill that you want to get your information on your bills, there are so many different ways that we’re interacting with the web online that we need to make sure that we can reach all of the different pieces of information and not leave anyone out.

That, in short, is web accessibility. And it says here people with disabilities, but it really means making it accessible for everyone. And we’ll talk a little bit about that as well. The reason I say everyone is because the WHO and the CDC have found that 28% of adults in the US have a disability.

And that can be anything from a temporary disability to low vision and older age or as Kelly mentioned also spinal cord injuries, cognitive disabilities and the list goes on and on. Disability can meet every person at any point in their life and so we need to think about it as a humanitarian issue as well and something that we need to address from a more holistic landscape. So 28% of adults in the US and 16% of the global population are living with a disability.

What does that mean for your business? Well, it means that you can tap into a wider market and there is also a significant compliance component. So I’ll let Kelly dive into that.

The Legal Landscape

Kelley: Sure. Thanks. So, let’s break it down for a second. Let’s break down why accessibility is so important from a legal perspective.

We all know that with such a large population of individuals living with disabilities and as business owners yourselves, I own my own business, like you never want to exclude a segment of society from being able to have the benefits of what you’re offering. And so at the very fundamental level, having accessible websites and apps is the right thing to do. But we have had guidance through different laws and interpretations of laws along the years that we are going to share with you today.

So when we talk about web accessibility, some of the pillar pieces of legislation that we’ll get into in a minute that focus on the rights of people with disabilities actually predate the digital space that we live in now. But the reality is that even when those laws came into being, the digital landscape looked very different than it does now. Web accessibility is a legal requirement and non-compliance with digital accessibility means that you’re not in compliance with laws like the ADA, the AODA, California-specific laws like the Unruh Civil Rights Act, and others. And it can result in legal accountability.

You can have fines, you can have lawsuits, and there can be other consequences that impact finances and ultimately your bottom line and reputation. What I can tell you is that we’ve been tracking web accessibility cases in the legal setting for a number of years now. And you can see the chart that’s shown on this particular slide goes back to 2018 and there’s a 73% increase in ADA digital accessibility lawsuits over the years. And we only anticipate that number is going to continue to climb.

The ADA and Title III

Kelley: So actually just this past week we celebrated 35 years of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was enacted in 1990 to prevent discrimination and ensure equal access to people with disabilities. It was a monumental piece of legislation that established that people should not face discrimination in different areas of society on the basis of disability. A lot of times we think about what falls under ADA Title III.

Title III covers places of public accommodation and prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in places of public accommodation. For example, I’m a wheelchair user. And so if someone has a brick-and-mortar shop and a set of stairs is the only access point into that building, then I would have to think about whether the business is compliant under Title III because it’s a place of public accommodation. And so, most public-facing businesses, the places you visit on a daily basis to get your coffee or to go grocery shopping, that’s what we consider in many respects under Title III.

But what was not anticipated at the time but has now been interpreted through the Department of Justice and various cases is that Title III in particular under the ADA includes websites and digital services. And that really changes the landscape on what we all should be looking at when we think of accessibility because we all certainly have that web and digital presence these days.

So, the question becomes and has been for many years like does the ADA apply to websites? The short answer is yes. While we know that the ADA did not specifically mention web accessibility, in 2022, the US Department of Justice reaffirmed that the ADA applies to all goods, services, and activities offered by public accommodations and that those include websites.

Section 508 and Federal Requirements

Kelley: In the disability rights space, we often talk about the pillar pieces of legislation that really have guided and directed the rights of people with disabilities throughout the years in the United States. The Americans with Disabilities Act is one that many of us recognize. Another one that actually predated the ADA but is a very important one is called Section 508. Section 508 falls under the Rehabilitation Act and it becomes important if your organization receives any federal funding, serves a government agency or it is a government agency or a government body, your website is legally required to be accessible under Section 508.

This is especially relevant for federal contracts and funding. So if you want to work with or sell to the government then Section 508 compliance is mandatory and under that umbrella of Section 508 the relevant web accessibility standard is WCAG 2.0 Level AA. That’s the legal standard. That’s kind of the floor of accessibility.

Of course, we can always strive to do better, but if you’re receiving federal funding, if you’re applying for a federal contract, your website has to at least adhere to the guidelines under that 2.0 level AA. And that may mean that you need a VPAT. A completed Voluntary Product Accessibility Template, or VPAT, is often required to be able to demonstrate that compliance. Not only that you have taken steps and measures to make it compliant, but that you have checked and demonstrated that there is in fact compliance under WCAG.

Why California Is a Lawsuit Hotspot

Kelley: Now, most of you today probably have some connection to California because our webinar was specifically titled to talk about California. And there’s a couple of reasons why it was really important to focus on California. And that’s because there are additional legal protections at the state level. We just talked about two federal pieces of legislation.

Section 508 and the ADA apply to any state in the United States. They are federal laws. But now let’s get into what other particular state laws are in place that may cause even bigger exposure when a website is inaccessible. California also has additional state-level laws that protect people with disabilities.

The reality is we’ve seen a lot of ADA web accessibility lawsuits coming out of California. And to be clear, you don’t have to be based in California. That means you’re serving customers in the state. And that in itself could be enough to expose you to legal action in California.

Now, for example, like we can look in back in last year in 2024, there were three states that accounted for 85% of all ADA web accessibility lawsuits. Those were New York, Florida, and California. Only 15% of ADA web accessibility lawsuits fell outside of those three states. That is a big deal.

So, California, it ranks number two in the nation for ADA related web accessibility lawsuits. And there are several reasons for that. Basically there’s overlapping federal and state laws that make accessibility compliance more critical. If you don’t operate your website in an accessible way, there may be more damages that can be collected in California.

And I’ll get into that a little bit more. California places a strong emphasis on disability rights, which is a positive thing, but California courts actively have applied the ADA, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, and other regulations to the digital experience. And because of that, I mean, there have been a number of lawsuits filed in California for businesses that actually are operating outside of the state but are serving customers that are in California. Now the bottom line as a business owner is oftentimes risk assessment and this creates a greater risk for business operators.

Non-compliance risks are costly because they can involve legal actions, which I can tell you as a lawyer are not inexpensive and ultimately require you to remediate the inaccessible site. But it also causes that reputational damage and financial penalties. And no business needs to go through that when there’s solutions available that really help make sure that everyone has access to your website.

California Accessibility Laws

Kelley: Let’s go through the key California laws that impact web accessibility. Really when we think about state laws that protect people with disabilities like California is really at the top of the list. I operate a law firm in the District of Columbia. We also have the strong D.C.

Human Rights Act, but the Unruh Civil Rights Act is the strongest state civil rights law that exists in this country to protect people with disabilities and it comes down to one thing. The ADA. If there is a legal claim made under the ADA, really what it’s trying to do is correct the problem. Under the Unruh Act, California law incorporates the ADA and also allows people to sue for monetary damages and it can be at $4,000 per violation.

And that in the digital space I can only imagine can add up very quickly. To put that in context, If I were to as a wheelchair user go to a brick-and-mortar store and I had no physical access, that would be a violation. That would be a $4,000 penalty. If you’re talking about a number of people trying to access a site and they’re unable to because it is not compliant with WCAG 2.0 Level AA then you could have that exposure point repeatedly.

So the Unruh Act is a very strong and important civil rights state piece of law and that’s predominantly because of the financial penalties that it provides under it. There are some other California laws that should also be mentioned including AB 434, which requires California state agencies to make their websites conform to WCAG 2.0 Level AA and post an accessibility certification. So, not dissimilar to Section 508, but an additional layer of protection in California. The CCPA and CPRA are among the country’s strongest consumer protection laws.

But California’s privacy law mandates that privacy notices, opt-outs, and user controls be accessible for all users. And that’s very important. And finally, there’s a pending piece of legislation that will be tracked, but ultimately AB 1757. It is proposed legislation that would require all websites and apps offering goods and services in California to actually bump up and comply with WCAG 2.1 AA.

And it would allow a private right of action to be brought, meaning an individual could sue the business when there was not that level of compliance. So, a lot to digest here, but ultimately, California has a lot of protections in place, but at the same time, there’s a lot of ways to get ahead of this so that really none of these issues ever have to become what consumes your attention. Because you can make sure in advance that your website is accessible.

The Unruh Civil Rights Act and Enforcement

Sapir: Absolutely. Let’s see. The Unruh Civil Rights Act is the most powerful tool for web accessibility enforcement. We’ve covered that.

Another point to add is that if there is an ADA violation in California, it can also constitute a violation under the Unruh Civil Rights Act. That creates dual-track exposure, including the $4,000-per-violation penalty and potential emotional distress damages. It can quickly escalate the financial risk. Kelly, I don’t think that we shared this at the beginning of the webinar, but for the audience here to know today that only between 3 and 4% of the internet is accessible at this point in time.

When we look at the violations that are happening online, they are so vast and they touch a lot of different areas of a website. But can you share a little bit more information as we’re going through this?

What would be considered a violation that could lead to some of this enforcement?

Kelley: The laws ultimately say that the disability community cannot be discriminated against on the basis of disability. But then WCAG provides a set of technical specifications on what components a website needs to include so that it is not in violation of the ADA. You’ll be doing a demo later, and I always find it helpful to see the different controls, including screen-reader and keyboard-only navigation and then adding in different things like if you have ADHD being able to turn off certain filters so that you can narrow in and really be more focused in what you’re looking at.

There are many technical specifications, which is why having a platform incorporated into your site that is automatically doing those updates as you’re adding to your website can become so helpful because at the end of the day we’re all very busy business owners and there’s no way we could keep up with these things on our own. But using a solution like accessWidget makes it much easier to feel confident that it is optimizing the accessibility standards to your site and that then you do not have to worry as much about whether new additions will create ongoing issues.

This helps prevent accessibility from becoming an ongoing issue.

Sapir: Thanks for sharing that. We’ll definitely get into a little bit more about the WCAG, but also for the purpose of just sharing that if it is $4,000 per violation and there can be multiple violations on your website and it’s dual-track exposure with the ADA and Unruh Act, people can understand how that might add up.

AB 434 and Consumer Privacy Requirements

Kelley: There are not really exclusions here. The idea is that a person with a disability should be able to access a website using the accommodations they need, whether that is a screen reader or another feature that helps them focus. It does not apply only to a particular industry or sector. This is opening the worldwide web to everyone.

Assembly Bill 434 sets the relevant standards. It requires California state agencies to comply with WCAG 2.0 Level AA and post an accessibility certification on their homepage and it really is serving as a precedent for broader state level expectations under WCAG compliance. I suspect many other states are going to be adopting similar pieces of legislation. And again, just to dive deeper into our consumer protection laws in California, people do not always realize how broadly consumer protection law can apply, including to accessibility.

So, those privacy notices, the opt-out form, those cookie banners, all those things that you see everywhere, those also need to be accessible so someone is able to opt-out through a screen reader or keyboard control. The interfaces must be screen-reader-friendly, keyboard-navigable, and compliant with WCAG guidelines. Businesses that collect personal data from California residents are required by law to make sure that all data-related interactions are usable to everyone. And failing to meet accessibility standards in these areas can result in privacy compliance violations, which is just going to compound because you’re still going to have that underlying ADA violation, the Unruh Act violation.

Now you’re adding in consumer protection issues as well.

Understanding WCAG

Sapir: Thanks, Kelly. We’ll definitely dive into this. And there’s a lot of information that you shared today and there is a great deal to absorb and regulations in general can be a little bit of a whirlwind of content for us to dive into. So, this session is being recorded and we will share the recording after with everyone.

Now, we’re going to dive a little bit deeper into the web content accessibility guidelines. And Kelly, is this me or you?

Kelley: You’re up.

Sapir: Okay, amazing. So, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG. These are the standards for ADA compliance. They were developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, a global standards organization that wrote this guidebook on how to make content accessible.

There are four key principles to accessibility that they’ve defined. Perceivable means presenting information in ways that the user can perceive. So we’re going to talk about alt text for images for example. How would someone with low vision or someone who is blind be able to perceive an image on a website?

Operable means that all interfaces and all the components on the website are going to be usable with different inputs. And that can be keyboard navigation such as navigating through every single element on the page or being able to just reach the parts of the page that you really want to get to. Understandable relates to content and the readability of a website.

How much can you understand from that website? Is the language going to be easy enough for you to understand? Is the text styling, font size, spacing understandable to you?

Robust is the final principle. It means that the content needs to work reliably with a wide range of devices and assistive technologies. So that can mean that you have accessibility for your website, the mobile version of your website, that you’ve tested it in with different technologies as well to make sure that it could work in any sort of use case for any type of visitor to your website. When we’re talking about the WCAG, so I did mention that the W3C developed WCAG and it’s basically been the global standard that’s been incorporated by governments around the world.

So, it’s been really difficult to standardize web accessibility, but for that reason, different governments, including state governments, are referring to the WCAG as sort of the golden standard. And we do have a few different versions of this. So, it did start with the 2.0. We are moving toward WCAG 2.2.

Right now, we’re still in that 2.1 phase. So, you’ll often see with government entities that they might require a 2.0 level. But as we’re advancing the technologies and the digital accessibility and making more progress with assistive technologies, we’ll see those standards getting higher and expectations for businesses are also increasing. So right now there are three different levels of conformance.

Level A is your basic accessibility. It is the basic level expected for a website. Level AA is the most common target. This is the most common level of conformance for accessibility and what most websites are expected to reach when working toward conformance.

And AAA is the highest level of accessibility. And this also goes beyond just your website property, but also to other assets that live on your website. That could be media accessibility, PDF documentation, other VPATs, for example, were mentioned before. So all of those elements are referenced.

100% conformance is not expected. It’s also not necessarily fully attainable. We like to say here that accessibility is a journey. It is better to start somewhere and get a head start on accessibility and make sure that you’re doing something like scanning your website for accessibility or making sure that you’re hiring a user tester to check if your website is working for them before it grows into a large, overwhelming project.

But if you start small and break down components of testing different elements to make sure that they work for everyone, you’ll see that you can build up that program really quickly. And that’s essentially what accessWidget is there to do is really help you build that up. So before we dive into a demo and get into the Q&A section of the webinar, we do want to ask you if your website is compliant. So we do have a scanning tool here available.

You can use your phone or another tool to do a QR scan and reach our accessScan solution. This will basically give you an overview of where your website stands on the compliance scale. What are the areas for improvement?

It will also give you an understanding related to the WCAG standard that it aligns to and what sort of disability might be affected by it being compliant or non-compliant. So, I’ll leave this up for one second and we’ll also put this in the chat when we get to the Q&A.

The Business Benefits of Accessibility

Sapir: Okay, let’s talk quickly about the benefits of web accessibility because they are plentiful. So aside from the risk mitigation and everything that we’re doing there, there are some positive benefits that are related more to the quality for your brand and that can be boosting brand reputation because enhancing the features for people with disabilities or enhancing the features for accessibility don’t only reflect well for that community, they reflect well for everyone. And it shows your leadership in that space.

It shows how you’re taking care of your brand and making sure that you can reach a wider audience and say that you’re a leader in inclusion. It also allows you to make meaningful impact for your website and tap into new opportunities, which we’ll talk about in a moment, but you’ll see this number over here, the $8 trillion that you can unlock. Let’s get into that. So a year or two ago, the valuable 500, which is an organization based out of the UK, conducted research and they found that the disability community has significant spending power.

Essentially $8 trillion are associated with people with disabilities. And like I said before, disability can meet anyone at any point in their life. So that is a massive market that is currently not being tapped into properly. And when we think about the wider audience of the disability community, meaning friends, family, colleagues, people that hear about inaccessible websites, that can also affect the loyalty of other customers.

And that wider audience has a value of $13 trillion. So again, very high value in a very large minority group. The annual revenue lost by businesses due to an inaccessible website aside from also compliance costs might be $6.9 billion. So when we talk about accessibility and the usability and readability and understandability of a website and how much more effective it is, we’ve also done research and found that 71% of customers with disabilities will leave a website if it is not accessible to them.

That means that your bounce rate is going up if you don’t have an accessible website. Also having that additional alt text, proper headings, a structured website that has readable content on it will keep people on that website longer, supporting conversion rates and making sure that people are using your website as much as possible. And 50% of customers with disabilities will abandon or not complete a purchase due to accessibility issues. So I mentioned before there have been experiences that I’ve seen where someone is trying to navigate to the checkout and unable to click that button to reach the checkout.

So those are just some of the elements that you can consider when thinking about conversions, sales, profits that you could get from having a more accessible website. As we’ve said, an accessible website is a better performing website. We do see that it also has an increase in organic traffic. With the rise of AI and search, accessibility will also play a major role.

Websites that are accessible and are structured properly and have better accessibility features in them are going to appear higher in search results as well as gain more organic traffic, as studies using SEMrush data have shown. So like I said before web accessibility doesn’t have to be overwhelming. We’re here to simplify it, but getting started just today with doing that scan, coming to this webinar, learning more and enhancing your knowledge about the space is already doing a lot. And we’re really here to help you understand the space and get a little bit more into it.

So, if you have more questions after we get through the demo and Q&A, definitely feel free to contact our sales team. Feel free to share your questions in the Q&A and we’ll try to get to as many as possible.

How accessWidget Works

Sapir: Okay, so let’s dive into accessWidget. This is our flagship product, and today accessiBe offers additional solutions for businesses of different sizes. But to get started accessWidget really is here to help you understand how to navigate a website. So how does it work?

First it will use that same engine that we shared before to scan a website. Once the code or the widget is installed on that website, it will use AI to scan all of the different elements and detect those accessibility issues. Next, it will fix those issues automatically, remediating them. Websites are dynamic, living environments.

You might be updating yours on a regular basis. You might be changing structures. You might be AB testing. All of those things can be addressed via accessWidget because it is monitoring your website.

The third stage is maintenance: it rescans your website every 24 hours to make sure that all of your content remains accessible as you keep making those changes. And why should you use accessWidget?

Well, the installation process is pretty simple. I’ve been able to do it, so I believe in every single one of you on this call. Once you’ve completed the installation process, it takes up to 48 hours for it to scan your website, all of those different elements and make sure that those are remediated. It easily integrates with any CMS and site builder.

So as long as you have that JavaScript code, we are also building apps directly with CMS platforms. So if you do work with a specific platform, feel free to share that and we can try and follow up with you about the specific integration. But you don’t really need any technical background in order to be able to install it. And it won’t change anything in your source code.

This will enable your website to continue existing as you’ve developed it, but allow for every user who comes in to be able to make the accommodations or modifications that are right for them. What works for me might not necessarily work for Kelly and might not necessarily work for you. So, it’s good to give people those options and that is what truly creates an accessible experience.

Litigation Support

Sapir: Aside from the accessWidget solution and the technology behind it which we’ll get into in a moment, there’s also litigation support. So because this is a compliance- and litigation-heavy space, our business has decided to offer litigation support to businesses. This basically means that you’ll be supported by a team of in-house legal experts. You’ll receive comprehensive documentation.

You can have access to a top ADA attorney, so someone who specializes in this field. And all of this is also backed by a 15K pledge. We will share also the terms and conditions there. We do have significant experience in the space and a proven track record in court.

I’ll try and share also in the chat in a moment one of our case studies showing how we were able to get a case dismissed. But you can feel confident knowing that we’re at your side. And so with the litigation support package, as mentioned, you’ll have a dedicated case manager who will guide you through that process. You’ll get expert inspection of your website to analyze all of the accessibility claims that might have been made against it, but also tailored responses to those claims.

You’ll have an option for that consultation, professional documentation that verifies your efforts, which is super important. And I think we talked also before about documenting on your website showing the effort that you’ve made to having an accessible website. We also now offer multi-verification testing of your website. So we’ll use different tools.

We’ll test it from different perspectives and of course that 15K pledge. So we’ll get into the questions in a moment, but while I set up for the demo, bear with me one moment.

accessWidget Demo

Sapir: And Kelly, can you let me know if you see my screen? Awesome. Thank you. Yep, we can.

Perfect. This is one of our demo websites that is built to be essentially like a regular e-commerce website. You’ll see that it features sofas. It has your logos and sale options, which I always love.

But in the bottom left corner, you will notice that we do have the widget in this website. It is a square that’s sort of turquoise and it has an icon in it. You can actually customize that widget to appear however you’d like for your own website and make it appear in your brand guidelines as well. Once I’ve clicked on that widget, I do have options for multiple languages.

And at the top and center, we do have an accessibility statement. This actually describes exactly how your solution works in adherence with WCAG 2.1 at the AAA level and will give you more context into all of the different features that appear within the solution. Because we want to make sure that everyone can come in and identify the use case that might work for them. We’ve already bundled several different profiles at the top of the page.

So you’ll notice that we have a GIF and a slider here. When I turn on the seizure-safe profile, which helps people who are prone to seizures or have epilepsy, it stops motion on the page and dims the colors to make it a safer viewing experience for everyone. The vision impaired profile will enhance the visual elements of the website. So as I turn it off and back on again, you’ll notice, excuse me, you’ll notice that the font has been enlarged.

The colors are saturated. The font is more readable, which can help people with declining eyesight or low vision. The ADHD-friendly profile is my personal favorite. You’ll be able to focus on specific elements.

And the reason I like this is because if you’re on a text-heavy website and you’re able to focus in on the elements that you need, this will be a lifesaver. I have another trick that a colleague shared with me, which I’ll show you momentarily. The cognitive disability profile will highlight the different links and titles on the page. So those provide additional points of focus for the user.

And then we have these two profiles here which I’ll get into in a moment and those are the keyboard navigation and the screen reader optimization. But I did mention that there are a lot more features. So I can play around with scaling content, changing to a more readable font. I can have high contrast, dark contrast, monochrome is something that I love.

If I have specific preferences for text, title or background colors, I can make those adjustments. But then I mentioned earlier that if I really needed to focus on specific text on a page, what I could do, and this is a trick that my colleague shared with me, is hide the images and put a website in read mode. That way I can really focus in on just the important information that I need to have. So you can see how different people leverage the tool for different uses and how it has all of these different elements.

So I’ll reset this really quickly. And the reason I want to do that is I’ll show you that we do have these two profiles. And I’ll share a demo in a moment of how they work. But they actually work in tandem.

And this is actually where the AI comes into play on this website. So, if I were not to use accessWidget on this website, meaning I just actually used the shortcut to hide the widget entirely, I’m not going to be able to reach every single element on the page. I’m tabbing through right now and it just sort of jumps down without me reaching that checkout button, which I mentioned earlier is a significant issue if someone’s coming to an e-commerce website.

So, if I bring the widget back and use the shortcut, but I’ll tab through and you’ll notice at the top left that I have a skip link. This allows me to skip to the content. If I hit it again, it’ll allow me to skip ahead directly to the menu or to the footer. And the reason that this is helpful is if this is a website that I’m actually purchasing from regularly, I might not want to reach every single tab element that I can and actually jump ahead.

So, this does create shortcuts. There are other shortcuts that people who use assistive technology are familiar with as well that allow them to jump between different headers and sections. But as I tab through, I’ll be able to reach all of these different elements. And you’ll notice now that the drop-down menu has also opened, allowing me to reach more areas.

I can get to the sign-up form, and I can get to the checkout, and I can go buy as many expensive sofas as my heart desires. I’m also locked into this window until I exit out of it, which allows me to really know that I’m in that area. One more thing that happens when we enable the AI on the back end is that alt text and text descriptions appear on the back end. So if I were to reset the settings, turning this off and let’s say I’m using this image as an example.

We have an image here that shows me a few different things and I won’t get into that because I want to really show the magic of AI behind this. But I’m going to inspect this image and show you that on the back end, it’s actually saved as flower vase.png. And for someone who’s using an assistive technology like a screen reader, what’s going to happen when they reach this element on the page is it’s going to say image. And that’s not particularly helpful because what we do see in this image is that it’s Extra sale: 30% off.

Shop now. And it has an image of a vase. And maybe that will be helpful for someone who wants to shop for vases. So, I can either come in here and turn this feature on, but in fact, for someone who is using a screen reader, they’re going to get an audible notification that lets them know that this website is accessible.

So, I’m going to do that by turning on the screen reader option. I pressed Option+1 on my Mac. On a PC, it would be Alt+1. And now, what we’ll see here is that we do have an alt text that’s been added in automatically.

It says: ‘A vase filled with flowers, with the words Extra sale: 30% off. Shop now below it.’ And so it’s using image description and image detection and optical character recognition to be able to identify and describe what is happening in that image giving far better context to the user. And that’s really what’s expected especially if you have a website where you’re making frequent changes. You want to be able to have that sort of layer.

This also helps from a searchability standpoint. As mentioned, this provides many benefits. I feel like I’ve talked everyone’s ear off, so I’m excited to get into the Q&A. Are you, Kelly?

Kelley: Yeah, do it. Awesome. But no, that was super helpful. I always love just seeing how all the different features can be used for so many different people.

Audience Q&A

Sapir: Absolutely. So the first question that I have today is from Grace, who asks will this work with my website built on a particular platform?

Yes, accessWidget is a session-based tool and that’s important for a few reasons because it works with JavaScript-based CMS platforms. The changes I made apply only to my session. They are not affecting any other user. So they work with any CMS but they also allow any user to come in and make those changes.

I also have a question from Tom who asks, “Will accessWidget slow down my website or affect any of the UI/UX?” So again, it will not affect any of the UI/UX because it is not sitting in the source code. But also this is really an SEO question. So having accessibility features can encourage visitors to stay on and use the website.

And we’ve seen that with the SEMrush study that I mentioned before, but other entities have researched accessibility and websites and found that more than 73% of them had an increase in organic traffic after making those improvements and websites on average experienced a 12% traffic boost when they had accessibility solutions. So that’s quite phenomenal. Okay, next question. Kelly, I think this one is for you.

Chris is asking, “Does the size of my website matter?”

Kelley: The short answer is no. No website is categorically exempt under the ADA or state civil rights law. And if you look at the kinds of cases that have been filed related to web accessibility, the businesses being sued for not having accessible websites span different sizes and sectors. There really is no particular type of business that’s more targeted or one that really isn’t.

Sapir: Thank you for that. And another question for you, am I legally required to have media and files accessible?

Kelley: Yes. So, under WCAG 2.1 Level AA, it states that a website needs to be accessible, including all site content, documents, and videos. And so, someone has to be able to have access to all aspects of a site without difficulty. That’s why we are even seeing the California law come in place talking about even opt-out controls and cookie notices need to be accessible.

So if a website is made without considering accessibility in its entirety then that’s going to be an opening for concern for potential legal risk.

Sapir: I think that’s such a valid point and it’s so much easier to do this earlier than come back to it with a massive project. So, as said before, just getting started with that accessScan tool, just getting started with looking at a project, looking at a specific page, creating reusable accessible templates will make the whole accessibility area of your business a lot easier to get started on. I also see a question in the chat.

Are B2B websites that do not do business with the government required to be ADA compliant? And under, correct me if I’m wrong, Kelly, but under ADA Title III, any publicly facing website needs to be accessible. But in general, all websites should be accessible.

Kelley: Yeah, that’s right.

Sapir: Yeah. And I’m thinking about this also from the perspective of if you even have a website that is closed to the public, but it’s for the use of your employees, if they have not disclosed a disability or if they need an accommodation, making sure that all of your platforms work for everyone is such a great way to make sure that you actually are taking care of your business. And I see another question. I’m just reading it very quickly.

Apologies. There’s a lot of questions. I’m trying to get to all of them. So, I see also, how does WCAG 2.2 fit in?

And I can touch on this briefly. Specifically at accessiBe, we are working on our accessibility engine to make sure that all of the rules that we’ve implemented on the AI side are going to be adapted to the new regulations. The goal is for websites using the solution to conform to WCAG 2.2, with elements adapted as digital accessibility standards evolve. And the difference between WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 is that they’ve become more robust.

But Kelly, is there anything you would add?

Kelley: As we discussed earlier, WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 describe a baseline, but higher levels can be achieved. Certainly, when evaluating a website, businesses should not focus only on the minimum; they should consider how to give more people practical access.

Sapir: Yes, I’ll summarize quickly also that there is a question here about eligibility for small businesses with fewer than 15 employees. In fact, there is an ADA tax credit that I do recommend looking into. You can find more information on the accessiBe website. And another question here about does a California website need to sell a product to be subject to the access requirement?

My understanding is that any publicly facing website needs to be accessible. Kelly, do you want to add anything to that before we close off for today?

Kelley: No, I mean because what we’re going to ultimately see is perhaps a more defined federal legislation down the road. But for now what we know is the Department of Justice has said that websites are applicable under Title III of the ADA and it does not create those specific carve-outs. Based on the guidance and precedents available, everyone should make sure that accessibility is included in their sites.

Closing Remarks

Sapir: Thank you so much. That was so helpful. And thank you to everyone who was on this webinar today. I think it was educational.

I learned a lot. I hope you did, too. For anyone who didn’t have their question answered today, we apologize. We ran short on time.

However, please schedule a demo with our colleagues from the sales department. We’ll share more information about that. Again, we’ll follow up also with the recording so you have access to all of this great information. And we’re excited to be in touch in the future.

Thank you so much.