Webinar: The risks, reality, your response for web accessibility

Welcome

Sapir: Welcome, everyone, to today’s webinar on the risks, reality, and responses to website accessibility. Today’s conversation focuses on the implications for those of you who are either based in California or serving Californians, whether you’re elsewhere in the US or anywhere around the world. Web accessibility regulations and enforcement may apply to you, and we’ll discuss that in more detail today. I’ll briefly introduce myself. My name is Sapir Yarden. I am the community and brand lead here at accessiBe.

I am involved in a lot of different things, but one of them is having these conversations with Kelley about how regulation is impacting our customers and the community. I’m really excited for the conversation today and for you to get to know our guest speaker. Kelley, go ahead and introduce yourself.

Kelley: Yes, and good afternoon to everyone on the West Coast—and wherever else you’re joining us from. Today is a great opportunity to share, in a short amount of time, a lot of useful information to carry back with you in whatever sector you’re serving. My name is Kelley Simoneaux. I was paralyzed in a car wreck when I was 16 years old and became a paraplegic and wheelchair user. For many years now, I’ve been navigating the world through the lens of accessibility based on my own need for the spaces around me to be accessible.

I’m also the founder of a law firm that helps individuals after catastrophic events and, more broadly, in the disability space. That is the lens I’m bringing to today’s conversation: my lived experience as well as my legal insight. Glad to be here.

Today’s Discussion

Sapir: Thank you so much, Kelley. What a great introduction. So, for today’s conversation, we are going to cover where the risks really originate. Then we’ll go into how these lawsuits actually happen, where the regulations impact you or where they might meet you in your business journey and your accessibility journey, some of the gaps that you may or may not be aware of, and next steps for you to move forward. So, Kelley, I’ll start with you on this. Where do accessibility risks really originate?

Where Accessibility Risk Begins

Kelley: When I talk to people about this, I look at it as a business owner myself. I’m evaluating those risks, and at the end of the day, the way most people get information and access businesses is through websites and the digital space. When websites are the customer-facing system for all of us, they need to be open to everyone. accessiBe has shared these statistics, and only around 2% or 3% of the internet as it exists today is accessible.

That’s an abysmal statistic because when we don’t have accessibility in the digital space, that gap creates a real barrier for someone trying to buy a pair of shoes, log in to their bank, or whatever the day-to-day needs are. When those barriers exist, they create a very natural legal exposure as well as operational exposure. You’re not going to get the benefit of that sale, and you’re also opening yourself up to a legal risk because at this point, it is well established that websites have to be accessible, just like brick-and-mortar storefronts.

Sapir: You bring up so many good points. If accessibility were a coin, on one side you have the brand trust, the brand perception, and the reputation of your business. On the other side, you have the legal and compliance risks of not doing the right thing. So, they feed into each other, but they’re two different sides of the same topic. You also mentioned something timely: about a week ago, WebAIM released information about the number of websites that are accessible. They do an annual scan of the top 1 million websites.

When I started at accessiBe, nearly five years ago, it was around 2 to 3%. We have made a whopping two percentage points of progress. So, we’re at around 5% accessibility right now, but what we’re also finding is that the number of accessibility errors per page has gone up as more people are using vibe coding to create websites. So, it’s this really interesting dynamic where if you’re not building with accessibility awareness, if you’re not thinking about all of your end users and all of your potential customers to begin with, you’re bound to repeat the same issues.

So, maybe we are making progress as a whole, but that doesn’t necessarily help on a page-by-page basis. As you said, customers still face specific barriers in their user journeys. If I want to complete a purchase, leave my information, or download resources but cannot do so, that is a real barrier. Those barriers prevent me from participating equally in society where I can access that information. Those are some really interesting points that connect back to what you said. Thank you for sharing.

Quick Accessibility Self-Check

Sapir: Okay. So, for those of you who are on the call today, we have this quick self-check. We haven’t done this before, but I do want to open it up for you to consider when you’re thinking about accessibility for your organization, for your website. This doesn’t necessarily depend on how large or small your business is. First, who owns accessibility at your organization? Will one person take ownership, or will multiple teams each take responsibility for part of the effort? Next question. Are legal, product, and marketing aligned on your accessibility goals?

The scope of accessibility can look different depending on whether you’re approaching it from a legal and compliance perspective or from the usability of a tool. Third question: when was your last audit? Do you know the last time you actually audited or reviewed specific flows on your website? That can play a major role in uncovering barriers that may have affected your website’s results, negatively or even positively, but you didn’t know that they were accessibility issues. Fourth question: have you tested those journeys yourself? That can also be a really telling moment.

Our final question is: if an accessibility issue is reported today, who’s the person who responds to that? I think you can see the theme here in these questions of taking accountability and understanding which part of the project or implementation applies to you, and we hope you carry that forward as we move forward in the conversation. Kelley, do you have any thoughts about this sort of quick self-check?

Kelley: From a practical standpoint, I often see businesses discover accessibility issues only when they have to engage a lawyer or a legal issue surfaces—not when they conduct an audit. That is why it is important to have a process in place for regular audits that bring issues to light. Businesses should not first become aware of accessibility gaps because someone in the legal field brings them to their attention.

Why California Creates More Exposure

Sapir: Such a good point. Moving forward, can you tell us a little bit about why California specifically increases exposure? I mean, I know from my experience that California consistently falls in the top three states for ADA lawsuits, but I’d love to know a little bit more about why specifically California.

Kelley: We can break this down a little bit. Let’s go back to the Americans with Disabilities Act. That legislation was put into place in 1990. At that time, the digital space did not look in any way, shape, or form as it does today. And so it was not specifically contemplated. However, the Department of Justice and other cases that have come forward make it very clear that under Title III’s public-accommodation provisions, the digital space must be accessible. So you have this piece of federal legislation that covers many aspects of accessibility and applies to every single state. Then we look at California.

California has several factors that make it worth noting, which is why we’re bringing California to the forefront of this webinar. One is the number of cases filed, driven in part by the state’s specific regulations. California has additional icing on the ADA cake, which is the Unruh Act. The Unruh Act is a piece of civil rights legislation that was codified in California that not only bolsters what the ADA says about accessibility but also provides monetary damages for each act of inaccessibility that is found. That raises the question: does each person who encounters an inaccessible space on your website represent another $4,000?

It’s $4,000 for each act. Will those amounts continue to add up? Those numbers can add up quickly. And that is why California has a very strong system in place to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities. It’s also important to note that you don’t have to be a business that’s registered in California or has a store located in California. If your business is reaching clients or potentially reaching people in California, that could be enough. Finally, the CCPA and CPRA, that’s the California Consumer Privacy Act and the California Privacy Rights Act.

These are also state-specific laws that create an additional level of protection for consumers, which means they can add an additional layer of exposure to businesses.

The Regulatory Landscape

Sapir: Yes, definitely. I want to add a few more points to what you were just saying. On the CCPA, CPRA, and privacy in general, cybersecurity was not thought to be such an important aspect. It was also treated as a nice-to-have. And it has slowly become an incredibly important part of infrastructure for all websites and for all businesses, to the point where now, when you go on a website, you’ll probably have some cookie requirements. You’ll encounter a CAPTCHA. You’ll find the privacy policy of any business.

If you want to do business with another organization, you might want to review their privacy policy as well. That infrastructure already exists in California, which means that if someone has an inaccessibility issue with part of your privacy infrastructure on your website, that can constitute an accessibility barrier to them. That is also the trajectory we’re seeing with accessibility. Businesses have often viewed it as a nice-to-have, but we are moving decisively away from that—especially as regulations increase, web experiences become more dynamic and complex, and anyone can build a website without necessarily building accessibility into it.

That is what we want to bring to you today. We also have a variety of guests on the webinar. Some of you may come from consumer-facing businesses, whether you’re working in retail or e-commerce, and some of you may come from public-sector organizations. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, we actually have two different titles. Title II focuses specifically on state and local government. A DOJ compliance deadline was scheduled to take effect just days before this webinar. But because only about 14% of organizations were prepared for that deadline, they’ve decided to move it back by a year.

That doesn’t mean, hey, you have a year until you should be accessible. It means you have a year to get this right. Otherwise, enforcement issues may follow. Title III is the part of the ADA that is focused on private businesses and treats websites as places of public accommodation. Those experiences need to be accessible, and we have seen a rise in ADA lawsuits against private businesses over the years. In fact, in 2025, there were over 5,000 lawsuits. So this isn’t about bringing some random legislation to you. This is telling you, hey, there’s really an infrastructure of regulations behind this.

Someone at your organization needs to start taking ownership of it. Someone needs to start reviewing and preparing for this so that you’re in the best possible position. That matters not only from a compliance perspective, but also in terms of your brand reputation and what that can yield for your organization. And, Kelley, I believe one in four adults in the US has a disability. The Valuable 500 found that the purchasing power of that community of people with disabilities is $8 trillion.

When you also consider friends, family, and the broader community around people with disabilities, that purchasing power or that pool of money then becomes $13 trillion. And that’s a market you should be tapping into. It simply makes sense numerically.

Accessibility Is Also Good Business

Kelley: There is definitely a level of brand loyalty. If you think about it, that makes sense for me as a wheelchair user. If I can go to a restaurant that has a stair-free entry and a bathroom I can use, it allows me to have a nice experience with my family eating dinner, and I’m likely going to go back. The same holds true in the digital space. If you can log on, accomplish your goals, click where you need to click, reach checkout, and complete the transaction, you’re going to return to that space over and over again.

Sapir: Agreed. I think the same thing for everyone, and it doesn’t have to be just for people with disabilities, but even more so in that community.

The Cost of Inaccessibility

Sapir: As we said, California’s Unruh Act provides for $4,000 in damages per accessibility violation. You may not have seen the numbers presented this way. I’ll explain in a moment, because we have examples of settlements to share. But consider the $4,000 per violation alongside the WebAIM research that I mentioned earlier, which has scanned 1 million websites and found that the average number of accessibility errors per page is about 56.1.

If you had around 56 errors per page times $4,000 per violation, that’s about a quarter of a million dollars for your homepage alone before you’ve even thought of the cost of legal fees of actually remediating those issues. So, you’re seeing here now in real time what this could look like if you don’t address those accessibility barriers. Kelley, do you have any comment on that?

Kelley: Having to fix things after the fact will always create a much more expensive situation. A lot of people say, ‘I’ll worry about it when I need to worry about it.’ First, having an accessible website is the right thing to do. We’ve already discussed why it’s a good business decision, and it also eliminates a substantial risk. If you start running those numbers, you can reach six figures very quickly. That doesn’t account for attorney’s fees and litigation costs and all the other components of a legal action; it just escalates at such a quick level, and it distracts you from building your business.

Sapir: Originally, Tanya Singer, our Litigation Support Manager, was supposed to join us for this webinar, and she works with our clients at accessiBe on a regular basis. She works with clients who receive a demand letter or lawsuit and come to us saying, “Hey, we need to make our website accessible as soon as possible.” She could speak a little bit more about the stress that follows someone who’s in that situation. To Kelley’s point about taking a proactive approach, in the US, anyone can sue anyone.

If you have a defensible approach, have taken concrete steps, and can answer the questions from our quick self-check—who owns this, when did you last complete an audit, and have you tested it yourself to make sure it works?—each of those small steps adds up. As Kelley said, and I agree, it’s going to be a lot more expensive to handle this after the fact, but most of you here today probably already have an existing website. How do you balance those two things: starting from the beginning, but also now playing catch-up?

And I think a big part of that is starting with one step. Check a specific flow on your website. Test only one page. Make sure you know who is responsible for that page, and make those adjustments so you can slowly build that into a broader program and start resolving broader-scale issues. We also have solutions for that, which we’ll discuss shortly. So, I know this number may seem scary.

We have two cases to share today that provide context for what has been happening in the California market, and then we’ll go into a little bit more about what you can do next.

Case Study: ReserveCalifornia

Sapir: So, the first case that we’ll share with you is Bashin v. ReserveCalifornia. This was a camping website. A blind camping enthusiast wanted to reserve a campsite for a weekend away but was unable to do so on the website and sued the platform. Eventually, the company that created the platform settled for $2 million under the Unruh Act and False Claims Act after claiming the site was accessible when it was not. So, Kelley, any thoughts about this sort of case?

Kelley: This case illustrates the crossover we were discussing, involving state, local, or federal government services—such as a website used to access public lands. The courts are going to take that very seriously, and many of the states now are implementing additional pieces of legislation to require businesses that are operating on behalf of the states to be accessible, and judges are unlikely to look favorably on situations where businesses have had plenty of time to make corrections and still have not done so.

When you see a $2 million settlement, a lot of that accounts for attorneys’ costs and fees, to be honest, but it just shows how much work attorneys have to do to litigate these issues, and ultimately, it falls back on the owners of the business.

Sapir: You phrased that perfectly, and I’ll add one more thing. The defendant was the web developer behind the California State Parks reservation platform. This connects directly to ADA Title II: vendors are also expected to deliver accessible experiences. We’ll see this more often: if you are applying for an RFP or if you want to be a contractor to a specific organization, you can expect to be asked about your level of accessibility as well.

Kelley: That’s right. The focus is whether the digital spaces created for the State of California are accessible. It doesn’t matter how many layers sit behind the experience; they all have to fall in line.

Case Study: Fashion Nova

Sapir: Okay, now let’s get into what I think is maybe my favorite case ever because it’s complicated but also easy to understand. So, Fashion Nova is a large e-commerce website based in California. They were sued as part of a class action lawsuit for not having an accessible website and settled for $5.15 million with a commitment to making their website accessible. This was back in 2024. Just recently, the DOJ dismissed that settlement for two reasons. The first was that the company had not properly implemented accessibility on its website, meaning it still had the same issues.

The second was that the website created for class members to apply for settlement payments was also inaccessible. So almost a double whammy of inaccessibility. Kelley, what are your thoughts on that?

Kelley: There are a couple of things here. First, let’s put this in context. This case is what’s called a class action. That means an individual, in this case, Alcazar, brought a claim against Fashion Nova, representing the interests of many people. That’s why you see a larger number, because if a case involves a thousand people, 1500 people, 20,000 people, the settlement amount can rise substantially. That is why this was treated as a class action. The second interesting point is that the Department of Justice became involved. As Sapir said, the case had been filed in court and was proceeding on its own path.

The Department of Justice inserted itself into this. It filed a statement of interest, and that meant that not only was the court looking at this, but the Department of Justice was also closely watching this kind of case and what was happening in it. There was an additional layer of scrutiny to ensure that this class action was settled in a way that really resolved the issues that existed.

It couldn’t simply be, ‘Here’s the payoff; now let us move on.’ No, the government wanted to make sure that this settlement also represented a clear change in accessibility for the website.

Sapir: You may be asking yourself: you’re sharing a state platform and a large e-commerce website that may have nothing to do with my business, but this is the direction the internet is moving in. There is now an expectation that businesses address website accessibility and put their best effort forward. And we’ve seen that settlements typically fall around, let’s say, $15,000 to $20,000. That’s still not a cost that you want to have to pay. Taking those initial steps and making sure that your website is accessible will help ensure that you’re prepared for the future of your digital business.

Kelley: One thing to add is that when the Department of Justice stated in the early 2020s that sites have to be accessible, it didn’t add conditions such as the number of employees you have or the number of pages on your website. It did not create those kinds of limitations. It simply said that sites need to be accessible. That means exposure can exist from very small companies all the way up to the very largest.

Sapir: And I’ve been in calls with customers who say, well, people with disabilities aren’t shopping on my website, but that simply can’t be true because, one, you don’t have that information, and two, because, as we said before, one in four adults in the US has a disability. Making these adjustments and remediations on your website to be more accessible is actually improving usability for everyone. As we mentioned earlier, California is historically in the top three states for ADA lawsuits. It follows New York and Florida, but we are seeing this trend upwards across the entire United States.

So, even if you’re not based in California, we want everyone in today’s conversation to be aware of this trend.

Common Website Accessibility Issues

Sapir: Some of the most common website accessibility issues can help you identify where to begin testing user flows and planning improvements. The first is navigation and menus. If you have a menu on your website, how can you test those user flows? If you’re not using a mouse and instead rely on another kind of assistive technology, can you navigate the entire website with just your keyboard and reach every element?

For example, if I want to complete a purchase of a shirt, but I can’t reach the checkout button with my keyboard, that website essentially becomes inaccessible to me, and I will most likely not be purchasing my shirt from that business. Next are forms and checkout. Similarly, if I want to leave my information, I need to be able to move from tab to tab, enter my information, and complete the purchase. Another common issue is images without alt text. This is one that often scares people.

If your website contains many images, whether you’re showing different products, team members, or views of California, you need to provide that information for those who are using screen readers. These will primarily be blind users, although not always. Alt text helps ensure that they get the same level of information that another user can see visually on the website. Alt text also improves usability and search indexing. That information can also support SEO. Next, we have buttons and links without clear labels. So, I’ve seen this happen when users with disabilities navigate websites and the buttons aren’t properly coded.

It may simply say, ‘link, link, link,’ instead of what the button actually is and what its functionality is. They may be unable to use it or understand where it will take them. Another thing that I’ve been guilty of when I managed a website in a previous life was adding buttons to a website and writing ‘click here’.

This is one of my favorite accessibility facts about accessibility, but ‘Click here’ is not a good call-to-action for your buttons because a person with a disability who either cannot see the website or just needs that additional context will not know where that button leads them. Always lead with simplicity. Make it obvious where people are going on your website, and make it as easy and intuitive for them to use your website. Finally, another common accessibility issue that we see is pop-ups and any sort of dynamic content.

These become a barrier when they appear, and a user cannot easily close them. For many people, going to a website and suddenly seeing like 10 different ads saying, ‘Get 15% off,’ can prompt the reaction, ‘That’s great, but I just want to see what’s on the website.’ It can be a very frustrating experience. But if you’re a user of assistive technology and you’re unable to exit those pop-up windows or navigate the resources that you want to navigate, it can be an even more frustrating and trapped experience.

Those are a few examples of common accessibility issues you might find on your website and things you can begin looking for today. I’ll move to the next slide. This one is for you, Kelley. How do accessibility issues like the examples I’ve shared actually become lawsuits?

How Accessibility Issues Become Lawsuits

Kelley: You can break it down into several stages. First, there’s an issue. Accessibility barriers are common across almost every website. Even when we make our best efforts, accessibility barriers can easily exist without ongoing audits, a system, and checks and balances. If they go unnoticed inside the business, that doesn’t mean they’ll go unnoticed by the public. The opposite is often true. When a longstanding issue repeatedly prevents people from navigating pages as they need to, it becomes an easily identifiable accessibility red flag. The barriers exist, people use the site, and someone encounters one. Sometimes people may try again.

Others may become frustrated with a system where they’re trying to go from site to site, and nothing is working, and they might want to do something about it. When they take action, it may begin with a demand letter. A demand letter lays out the person’s experience accessing your site and explains how it does not align with the legal requirements under WCAG or other accessibility guidelines. It will explain why the website is allegedly not compliant under the law and demand both remediation and some form of monetary payment as a result of that issue.

When a demand letter arrives at your office, what happens? What are you going to do? Usually, it is not a calm situation. Businesses are often unprepared, creating chaos around what’s broken, who’s responsible, and what we are supposed to do. You don’t really know what’s going on. It’s unclear how many pages are affected or where every issue exists. Then your priorities have to shift because you’re suddenly on the defensive. Then the company has to decide: how are we going to fix the issue? How are we going to respond?

What is it going to take to either fight the issue, make it go away, or resolve the issue? How will you remediate your site if you decide to settle? Usually, you are not given unlimited time to respond. You may be given only weeks or a month to establish your position and respond. By the time you’re at steps two, three, or four, what does all of this mean? It’s time away from building your business, building your brand.

You’re focusing on issues that could have been addressed on the front end, and you’re operating in scramble mode, knowing that there’s going to be a financial cost to make this go away.

Sapir: That’s why your investment in this webinar today is actually the gift of knowledge to help you prepare for that future situation. We don’t want that event to happen, but if it does, you’ll already have taken steps toward accessibility. You’ll already have started your plan to have a more effective website, a more usable website, and one that supports better business because it works for everyone. Thank you, Kelley, for breaking that down. That was really helpful.

I also invite everyone to add questions in the chat or Q&A box as we’re gearing towards the end of the webinar, and I want to make sure that we answer your questions before we end today. We’ll now touch on some key takeaways from the conversation, and, Kelley, I’d love your help here. Essentially, my understanding from all of this and having been in this space for a while is that accessibility risk is real, and it’s not only ongoing, but it’s growing. There is more awareness, and maintaining accessible websites is becoming more complex, even though solutions exist to identify and remediate the issues.

A proactive approach that puts you miles ahead.

Key Takeaways

Kelley: If you look back 10 or 15 years from where we are in 2026, there were only a handful of web accessibility cases that were coming into legal dockets. Today, those numbers are very high. And what it also means is that many of these cases have worked their way through the courts. The disability community now knows that the law is on their side.

People in the disability community don’t necessarily have to fear whether a claim can succeed, because there are enough cases and enough precedent to suggest that websites need to be accessible, and if they are not, then a plaintiff or claimant has a meaningful chance of compelling a business to change its website.

What Businesses Can Do Next

Sapir: Thank you for that, Kelley. As we’re nearing the end of the webinar, you may be wondering: you’ve walked through some of the things we should be checking, but what are some things that we can actually do to be more effective? With website accessibility, you want to test what’s breaking. And that means you can go in yourself and see where you’re having issues on your website. If you’re having an issue on your website, others probably are too.

If these are repeatable issues, if these are issues you can see happening across multiple pages or happening across multiple experiences and flows, see if that’s something you can also automate. Ask where you can solve the issue across the board rather than approach each item on its own. And then once you’ve made those changes, you also need to establish a cadence for returning to the work and documenting it. Documentation is becoming increasingly important these days because you can be making these efforts, but you also want to show the progress that you’ve been making over time.

I think much of accessibility is about progress over perfection. Kelley, feel free to chime in because this may be a personal opinion. There’s always going to be something more that you can do, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything to begin with. What do you think about that? I’m using you as a sounding board here.

Kelley: Yeah, I think that when you’re able to work collaboratively within your organization and recognize that you don’t have to feel alone in this, there are many companies that specialize in this work. For me, as a business owner, this was a very unfamiliar space. I’m a lawyer and know the law, but I don’t really know the technical side. We can’t let the fear of not knowing something keep us from doing something that makes a lot of business sense and is better for the community as a whole.

And so I think there are now so many options that make this a very manageable issue. It doesn’t have to overwhelm your business. It doesn’t have to overwhelm you financially or in terms of personnel. It’s very achievable, and it’s part of what every business should be doing today.

How accessiBe Can Help

Sapir: You laid that out perfectly, Kelley. Thank you for that. With accessiBe, we do have a few different options to address website accessibility internally at your business. We do have AI automation for our accessWidget. This is the interface that you might be familiar with, where users can visit the website and make quick adjustments that will make the website more usable for their particular needs. Its back-end AI supports screen reader optimization and keyboard navigation. It also supports developers. If you’re working with a developer team, the platform can also send tickets directly to them.

We also have solutions that help them actually identify gaps in accessibility experiences before launch or while the site is live. Basically, you’ll have a dashboard that tells you where the accessibility errors exist, and you can resolve them directly through the platform or send them to the ticketing system your team is using, resolving those issues more quickly in the source code. Finally, we also have expert services. That includes user testing and remediation of documents such as PDFs and video files.

The AI does not touch those because they are not considered part of the HTML if you’re adding them to your website. Another point is especially relevant for those working with public-sector organizations or seeking contracts: you may be asked to present a VPAT or an audit of your solution, and our accessServices expert team can support those needs. So those are a few different ways that our teams can work together. You can reach out to us, and we’ll have someone from our team also help you navigate exactly what the right fit is for your solution.

But essentially, the first step—and I’ll add this in the chat—is to scan your website, understand what’s accessible, what isn’t, and what’s working for you, evaluate those results, speak with someone from our team, and you’ll get an accessibility roadmap that helps prepare you for where the market is heading. So, with that, Kelley, I’ll put the first question to you, and we have a couple in the chat, so I’ll get to those right after. But for you, as we’re getting to the end of the webinar, what is a key takeaway that you want people to walk away from today’s conversation with?

A Final Takeaway

Kelley: What I would say is that the risk is real. We know that because the numbers we’ve shared represent real lawsuits that were filed. And so when we walked through the first four steps, there was also a fifth: if the issue isn’t resolved through a settlement, it goes to court. The lawsuits are real, but the demand letters and settlements beneath those lawsuits are like an iceberg. You see the small tip above the surface, but there is something massive underneath.

Those demand letters can come at any time, but if you get ahead of it, you don’t have to live in fear of that letter getting delivered to you. As a lawyer, I will say that the process can become a big headache for a business. The biggest takeaway is to use the tools that make it achievable to have an accessible site that invites all communities in, because ultimately it’s what you have to do and it’s the right thing to do.

Audience Q&A

Sapir: Thank you. Okay, so I’ll jump into the questions that we’ve received from the audience. Danielle asks, “How can a freelance web designer protect themselves from decisions made by their client? Beyond advising a budget and steps that allow for accessibility, there is no way for a contractor to force company decisions. Is a designer still financially vulnerable in that case?” Danielle, that is a great question and one that we’ve seen a lot especially with web agencies and specifically freelancers who are working maybe with smaller clients or who are taking that responsibility upon themselves.

The first step is recognizing that you’ve already learned about website accessibility today. As I said, you now have the knowledge to bring this to your customers and explain to them where the gaps really lie. Yes, you can’t force any client decisions, but you can put it into your own project plan or scope of work for your clients and say, “Hey, these are my recommendations. I need you to know that the law requires an accessible website.” And make sure they are aware and sign off if they choose not to proceed with an accessible website.

I don’t know whether that’s the precise legal phrasing, but they need to have that awareness, and you, as their web designer, want to reduce your own risk. Kelley, is that a reasonable ask?

How Can Freelance Web Designers Protect Themselves?

Kelley: What we’ve seen in the past is freelancers or smaller contractors who contract with clients. They’ll include their recommendations and a line item for accessibility. If a company decides not to proceed, the client can sign off acknowledging that they are declining that service, which creates a layer of separation and protection and shows that it was offered and explicitly declined. For your part, document that it was offered and that they have made the choice to decline that part of the service. Keep that decision in writing in your file.

Is accessWidget Enough?

Sapir: Great. I have two similar questions, so I’m going to combine them. One is from Tony. As someone currently using accessiBe, is implementing a widget alone sufficient for ADA compliance, or does it need to be paired with manual remediation to provide meaningful legal protection? That’s one part of the question. We also have another question from the accessibility group at Cognella asking—no, sorry, I wanted to read this other question from Michelle. I apologize. Can you clarify how the accessibility widget—accessWidget, as we refer to it—helps websites comply, and how a widget helps users access the services provided?

What is the responsibility of the website owner to correct or address any issues identified if the widget is correcting the compliance issue? How would a lawyer view sites that are using a widget to comply if they find a compliance issue? The bottom line of these two questions is whether the widget is doing enough. What is it doing? And do I need to be doing more? That also connects to the third question that we had about doing the bare minimum. accessWidget is the fastest solution we offer for maintaining accessibility on your website because it allows you to automate the process.

It helps users make adjustments that make the website more usable for their needs, and it adheres to the WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines, which support ADA compliance. We also offer a proof-of-effort toolkit as well as litigation support for customers. Based on these conversations and a great deal of customer feedback, we’ve added regular reviews of people’s websites. So we do have manual testing and custom remediation, meaning our team of experts will review your website, identify any gaps while the widget is active, and address them with you.

Websites change frequently. The goal is to make sure you’re not relying on a bare-minimum, set-it-and-forget-it solution, but instead maintaining an accessibility program that puts you in the best position both from a defensibility standpoint and from a brand trust and perception standpoint. Beyond trust and perception, the usability of your website will set you up for success. I hope that answers all three questions. It really comes down to your best effort. It’s about making a reasonable best effort.

The first step I would recommend is doing a scan of your website, testing a few user flows, making sure that you have a widget there to support it, and we have other solutions as well to support source-code remediation or any other documentation that you need. That was a mouthful. Kelley, anything that you want to synthesize from that?

Kelley: No, I think you did a great job presenting the big picture. From the court’s perspective, a judge is looking at the steps a business has taken to remediate an inaccessible site. What are they doing to allow customers to come in? If you have a widget but are still aware of an issue—for example, YouTube videos without captions—you should take steps to address it because it goes back to this: if you were in court, the judge might look you in the eye and ask, ‘What did you do, and what steps did you take?’ That is what the court is looking for.

It doesn’t have to be everything, but it needs to be reasonable, and it needs to show that effort was made.

What About PDF Accessibility?

Sapir: Great points. Thanks, Kelley. Our last question for today is from Alandra about how Expert Services audits PDFs to ensure ADA compliance. If your business uses PDFs, whether you’re documenting processes on your website or later sharing a newsletter as a PDF, most likely those PDF documents are not built with accessibility in mind. There are some simple fixes you can make, but for a lot of businesses that do have that process, they might have been adding PDFs for a long time.

Remediation means making sure it’s usable for screen reader users, supports keyboard navigation, and ensures that someone using assistive technology can navigate through those pages. Those would be the highest priorities, I think, in terms of the usability of those documents. The same applies to font size, readability, and color contrast. If someone has to complete a process on your website through a PDF and that PDF is not usable for them, then that whole process becomes inaccessible. That is the big takeaway regarding not just PDFs but any process that you have in your digital experience.

Closing

Sapir: Those were all the questions for today. We did go a little longer than I expected, but I’m glad that there was some participation. Feel free to reach out to us if you have any additional questions. We will definitely be following up with a recording and any additional information that you’re interested in. Feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn. We appreciate your time today and hope to see you at our next webinar. Thank you so much, Kelley, for your time. I really appreciate it.