Is Your Website Accessible To Everyone?

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In this episode I talk about a digital marketing tool called Accessibe.com that will help you get your website accessible to everyone.

Ask yourself, can a blind person navigate my (clients) website? If the answer is no, or that you have no idea then take a listen to this episode.

We talk about how this tool can help with people who are faced with multiple challenges,  blindness, color blindness, epilepsy, missing limbs, parkinsons disease, and much more.

Do the right thing and get your site accessible today.

 

**Transcript**

 

Speaker 1: (00:02)
This is digital marketing tool talk, never miss out or fall behind on the latest digital tools for social media, SEO content reviews, and the entire digital marketing space. I'm your host, Brandon Hughes. Welcome back everyone. I hope you enjoyed that last episode with honeycomb commerce. What a unique idea. I hope some of you find it useful. Well, a few episodes ago I mentioned a tool that helped you with something we all need to be doing and that's backups. In fact, it's one of the most popular podcasts episodes that I've done just by looking at downloads and visitors. Well today I want to talk about another tool that's gonna help us and hopefully your clients or your personal business website in doing something that we really should be looking at every day. And that's accessibility. How accessible is your website to those with a varying different types of disabilities or challenges in using a traditional website, whether it's on a PC or on a mobile device or a tablet. So today's tool that I'm going to share with you is hopefully going to help you, help you get your website accessible to all of those out there. And there's a little hidden bonus when you do this. Almost everything that happens behind the scenes is also going to help you with your S E O and getting found better online. So let's take a look.

Speaker 1: (01:51)
All right, so the tool I'm going to talk about today is excessive b.com. That's a C, C, E, S, S, I, B E. dot com. Not sure if I'm saying it right, but basically this is all they do is make sure that your website is accessible, uh, to varying, uh, people out there who have all kinds of disabilities or challenges. Now, when I first looked at this tool, I'll be the first to admit, very naive, very ignorant to this entire situation. But as I've gone through and done this research and read what this tool can do, it's really opened my eyes to all the different challenges that people have on a day to day business. Accessing something that just provides so many useful tools and information. You know, the, the web through the interface, which is your, your, you know, your portable phone, your laptop, your tablet. So there's, there's a group of people out there who have a very difficult time accessing that, accessing that information.

Speaker 1: (03:06)
So one thing that access would be does for those of you that are freaking out about, you know, will it work well with my, my website or not, is they provide a whole bunch of customization that you can do, whether that's, you know, your colors, your sizes and your shapes, uh, different icons and things that are going on on your website, um, and just moving things around so you really can use it in a way that it will integrate with your website. So they designed this by working with people who have disabilities, like blindness, epilepsy, different cognitive dysfunctions and, and others. Um, really opened my mind as I'm going through this. I mean, I, I've never really sat down and looked at my personal business website and said, and ask the question, how would a blind person interact with my website? I've never asked that question.

Speaker 1: (04:05)
I never thought to even ask the question that someone with epilepsy might have a challenge with my website. I didn't even know that, that that was something, you know. So I encourage all of you who are listening to real. Take a look at your personal business website. If you're an agency or you work on websites for people, look at your clients' websites and take a moment to think about, yeah, how would someone who's blind or has a disability of some sort interact with my website. Uh, this might be a tool that you might want to look. Even if you don't use the tool, it's great to go to their website and take a look at all the areas that maybe you didn't even think about needed to be addressed for your website. So, uh, this, um, works with WordPress, um, Shopify, Drupal, Joomla, Squarespace and a whole bunch of more.

Speaker 1: (05:04)
So, um, the integration is there for the majority of the heavy hitting, uh, website platforms, um, um, out there. So one of the, one of the questions I that you may have and that I had is okay, um, be not called, what disabilities can you help me with? So one of them is full or partial blindness and I'm uh, I'm gonna look into this more when I'm done. I have no idea how someone with full blindness would interact with a website. I'd love to learn about that so I could understand more. Um, about their challenge. Motor disabilities, joint injuries, you know, your wrist or your elbow, your fingers, limb amputation, someone who doesn't have an arm or both arms, you know, are they using a special tool for the mouse? Are they using the keyboard? I don't know. But these are challenges that the these people have.

Speaker 1: (06:02)
And I just think it would be awesome if you knew that your website was accessible by all these people who have huge challenges in life. Um, Parkinson's disease, these people have shaking hands, which a lot of times results in the inability to use a mouse. I would never even thought about that. So, uh, think about that as well. Uh, epilepsy I mentioned earlier, so flashing animations, you know, I've been to some amazing gaming, uh, websites lately and they just have all this stuff going on and it's super cool and it's futuristic and all just these amazing graphics and video animations going on and I love it and I just eat it up. Never once did the thought crossed my mind, Hey, someone with epilepsy would need to shut this off pretty quick. It could affect them. Seniors, you know, as we get more mature in life, there's just a variety of possible disabilities that you may come across.

Speaker 1: (07:03)
There's a cognitive type of disabilities like memory disorders or dyslexia or people who've been through a stroke or they're struggling to understand things or process things. These are challenges as well. Um, going back to visual colorblindness now you may think, okay, you don't necessarily need that. But with colorblindness, a lot of times what you need is the contrast right? The contrast between black and white, or is everything the same? Uh, people with cataracts, glaucoma, any type of visual impairment, these people have challenges interacting in what most of us would consider a traditional or standard. If you want to give it a label and put it in a box way, uh, with a, with a website of some sort. So think about that and just ask yourself, as you listen, as you're listening to this right now, just think, Hey, it's my website. How would a blind person interact with my website?

Speaker 1: (08:05)
And if you don't know, then check these guys out and see if it's possible solution, uh, for you out there. So I mentioned early in the introduction that one of the nice things about making your website accessible is it also addresses a lot of SEO, uh, things out there. It makes sure webs, if you address these things, your website will be much more SEO friendly. So, so for those of you out there who are, you know, writing your blog or have your website at an eight point font or a six point font, you should be taken out to the shed. Um, but definitely you need to adjust your font size. And having the right font size is like one of the basic ABCs of good SEO on any website. In addition to font size, you need to look at contrast. Can people easily read the things that are on your site?

Speaker 1: (09:06)
Can they EG easily digest all the content that you're putting on there? So the contrast and the font type, is it lots of curly cues and a very thin line? Is it just hard to read? If you address this and make your website more accessible with those types of fixes, it'll also benefit on the SEO side. Uh, there are, um, things like page title, hierarchy, uh, fixing that so people can navigate through your site using nontraditional tools like not the keyboard or the mouse, uh, changing titles, uh, alignment where these things are going. The ability to make the cursor bigger on your website, um, much bigger. Change it from black to white. So if you have a dark website, you want a contrast in cursor, you'll have a light one. You know, vice versa. These are all things that these people are facing on a daily basis when looking at and using, uh, websites out there. So let's talk about pricing.

Speaker 1: (10:13)
So I'll be the first to admit when I said, okay, I gotta make my website accessible. Um, the first thing I thought I thought and I I'll admit is a kind of rubbed me the wrong way. It's like, why, you know, why, why do I have to do that? Um, well, you know, that's another discussion for another time. Um, but the bottom line is we should, as content producers, as people who are in the digital marketing space, people who are working with clients and our own, our own sites, we need to be making the effort. We need to make our websites in this content accessible. And that's it. That's just the bottom line. So excessive be breaks there is out there pricing out based on the number of website pages. Uh, so if you're below a thousand pages, it's a, they're showing on the website now $490 a year.

Speaker 1: (11:08)
If you pay that annually. I know that covers like the majority of you who are probably listening. The next one up is if you're below a hundred thousand pages, and that's a bout 1500 bucks a year, but I know most of you, uh, under a thousand pages, $490 a year. That's awesome. So let me throw some acronyms at you. Uh, for those of you who are aware, there's ADA, you know, compliance with that. There's this WCA G 2.1 AA. This is the section within the ADA that talks about this, a compliance with websites and digital content. So if you, if you want to take a deep dive, you can jump into that and about it. The accessory, uh, so far, they're stating they have a 96% success rate for doing most of these things. So they're saying it's AI. We know that's not true. There's no true AI out there yet.

Speaker 1: (12:07)
It just doesn't exist. But it's an automated process that they go through. Um, and there's, uh, updates and the updates occur, I believe every 24 hours. So if you're dumping in new blog posts or adding products or a new page or a new section, you know that this is going to go back and look at everything every 24 hours. It keeps you up to date on whatever you're putting out on your website. The final thing I want to close with in talking about accessibility as a tool to make your website or your your client's websites accessible is about 15% of the population out there is excluded because websites are not accessible. So you know, a lot of times money just comes into play. It's like, okay, how am I, how am I going to spend? How much am I going to spend on this and why am I spending money on this while want?

Speaker 1: (13:00)
It's the right thing to do. You're going to sleep better knowing you did the right thing and the other is you got to remember, wow, if 15% of the population is excluded from my site because it's not accessible, boom, that's awesome. Then you have 15% of the population that when they do come to your website, you think they're going to be loyal fans, loyal users, gonna refer you, yes to other people within the community who have challenges accessing traditional websites. It's a win-win. Plus the SEO. Uh, one thing I forgot to mention was for those of you out there who are not doing basic one-on-one alt image text, you need to do that and that's just good basic SEO and that's something that's needed for your site to be, uh, accessible to people with disabilities. So in closing, I just want to say, Hey, take a look at [inaudible].

Speaker 1: (13:56)
Go through that listing, ask yourself some really hard questions and just say, Hey, is my website, is the websites that I design, are the clients that you know, I'm doing a content for click for, are they accessible and can I refer them? If it's, if it's for yourself, you can just sign up, you know, for accessory right through there. If you're a digital agency, they have a partner program, you can offer it as part of your suite of products or make a recommendation. And something that you're sending out. I really think it's a good idea for all of us to be looking at this because it's important and it's the right thing to do. One last thing before I go today, I know this one's been a little bit longer than normal is going forward, I'm going to start grouping these podcast episodes around a specific type of tool.

Speaker 1: (14:48)
For instance, the next several episodes are going to be all around the different email platforms that are out there, like MailChimp, constant contact, it, convert kit, et cetera, et cetera. I got some feedback from you guys and I've been kind of jumping around filling things out, so if you really dislike that idea, please let me know. He can email me@brandonathokumarketing.com otherwise, I look forward to kind of grouping the episodes around certain types of tools. So when you need a a particular type of tool and you're doing some research, you can just binge listen to a couple of shows at a time. If you like what you heard today, please rate, review and subscribe to this podcast. If you have a digital marketing tool that you like or you use, or even one that you've created, let me know in the comments or send me an email at Brandon. Put cool marketing.com I'll see you on the new school. Flip side.

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