Accessibility Remediation Services vs. DIY Accessibility: Which is Best for Your Business?
Accessibility Remediation Services vs. DIY Accessibility: Which is Best for Your Business?
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Can you create an accessible website on your own, or do you need an accessibility remediation service to ensure compliance with laws like the ADA? Here’s an in-depth look at the pros and cons of each approach.
Every organization needs to provide accessible online experiences. From a legal perspective, digital accessibility is essential; the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the European Accessibility Act (EAA), and other laws prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities, and an inaccessible website can lead to a costly lawsuit.
But from a user-first perspective, accessibility simply makes sense. An inclusive website works better for everyone — regardless of their abilities, preferences, or habits.
Of course, if accessibility was a simple on-off switch, everyone would switch it to “on.” In reality, building a website that works for everyone requires time, effort, and a working knowledge of accessibility standards.
There are two basic ways to approach digital accessibility: You can partner with an accessibility remediation service or take a DIY approach. It’s not always easy to determine which path is best for meeting legal requirements and providing a truly inclusive user experience.
Below, we’ll break down the pros and cons of each approach to help you determine which approach is best for your business.
What is an Accessibility Remediation Service?
An accessibility remediation service evaluates web content to make sure that it works for people with disabilities, including (but not limited to) those who use assistive technologies like screen readers (software that converts text to audio or braille).
All reputable remediation services use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to test content. WCAG is universally considered to be the standard for digital accessibility, and it’s an excellent test of compliance with the ADA, EAA, and other non-discrimination laws.
Accessibility remediation services might offer a range of options for their clients:
- Automated testing, which scans content for WCAG failures via software.
- Manual testing, which is performed by human testers.
- Accessibility reporting, which provides a snapshot of the website’s level of conformance and identifies errors that need to be corrected.
- Training services, which help developers, web designers, content creators, and other professionals learn how to follow the best practices of accessibility.
Pros and Cons of Accessibility Remediation Services
The right accessibility remediation service can be a powerful resource for earning, maintaining, and proving digital compliance — but finding the right service can be difficult, particularly if you have a limited budget.
Let’s take a closer look at the pros and cons of working with experts:
Pros:
- Scalability. As your website grows, your accessibility partner can help you maintain compliance without fundamentally changing the way you do business.
- Access to automation. Automated testing solutions can streamline the path to compliance. If your website has a large amount of content, automated audits may be essential for finding and fixing certain barriers.
- Built-in expertise. With expert guidance, you won’t need to guess about whether you’re remediating an issue “the right way.” You can be confident that your website provides the best possible experience for users with disabilities.
- Ease-of-use. Accurate reporting, advanced automation, and expert guidance cut down on the hard work of accessibility.
- A higher level of compliance. An objective third party can help you identify potential violations of the ADA and other laws, which can give you peace of mind.
Cons:
- Higher up-front costs. Accessibility remediation services can be expensive up-front, particularly when content requires manual testing and remediation.
- Ongoing costs. Many remediation services often use a subscription model, meaning you’ll need to budget for this.
- Research required. Some accessibility platforms have an over-reliance on automation, which can expose your business to compliance issues.
Pros and Cons of DIY Accessibility?
Remediation services can be expensive, and in some cases, their service options can be somewhat overwhelming. That prompts an obvious question: Can you create an accessible website on your own?
Yes — provided that you’re willing to put in the work. By taking a DIY approach, you’re making a commitment to learn about WCAG and to test your content thoroughly.
The DIY approach may not be appropriate if your website is complex (for example, if you operate an eCommerce store). Additionally, you’ll need to be realistic about the results: If you don’t use a screen reader or other assistive technology regularly, you might miss barriers that impact your users.
Let’s take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of DIY accessibility.
Pros:
- Flexibility. With a DIY approach, you’ve got a great deal of flexibility. You can set achievable goals that make sense for your business, and you can focus on the accessibility issues that are most likely to impact your users.
- Lower costs. You won’t pay for an ongoing subscription, and since most accessibility improvements cost little or nothing to implement, you’ll have more control over your budget.
- Self-sustainability. You’ll have opportunities to train your staff to treat accessibility as a priority. With the right approach, this can be beneficial in the long term — you won’t rely on another company to maintain your results.
Cons:
- Resource-intensive. Accessibility isn’t a one-time project, and maintaining compliance can be labor-intensive.
- A larger commitment. You’ll need to learn about every WCAG success criterion, research remediation techniques, and test your content yourself, which is a huge undertaking.
- Missed accessibility barriers. Some accessibility issues are difficult to identify and diagnose without significant experience. By testing your content yourself, you don’t have an objective view of your site’s conformance.
- No automation. If you don’t use automated tools, you’ll need to remediate every issue manually. That can be a massive job, particularly for eCommerce websites and other complex content.
- No detailed reporting. Accurate reports can help you keep track of your progress, set goals, and identify the business benefits of accessible design.
- Potential legal risks. By far, the biggest disadvantage of the DIY approach is the higher risk of legal exposure: Until you build some experience, you’ll have a high risk of overlooking issues that could lead to non-compliance with the ADA or other laws.
Which Accessibility Approach is Best for Your Business?
Both accessibility remediation services and DIY approaches have advantages. While remediation services offer expertise, efficiency, and a higher level of compliance, DIY methods provide flexibility and lower upfront costs.
A hybrid approach can provide the best path for building content that is as compliant as possible — and maintaining that level of accessibility over time. By leveraging DIY methods with automated tools and expert guidance, you can gradually build your accessibility skill set while taking immediate steps to improve your website.
For example, AudioEye takes a hybrid approach to accessibility testing. We start with our free Web Accessibility Checker that tests for more than 30 WCAG violations (more than any other tool on the market) which gives you an overview of how accessible your existing content is. From here, we apply automated fixes to these issues, saving time and resources. Finally, our team of human experts performs an in-depth analysis of your digital content to find more complex accessibility issues. Based on their recommendations for resolving identified issues, you can determine which accessibility issues need to be fixed first. With AudioEye’s hybrid approach, you can easily create an accessible and compliant website quickly, easily, and with expert support.
Enjoy the Best of Both Worlds with AudioEye
Creating accessible digital experiences is important for compliance, but it’s also an excellent opportunity to build a competitive advantage, reach more customers, and deliver a better experience to real users. A DIY approach can be an excellent starting point, but accessibility remediation services offer expertise, efficiency, and legal protection.
You don’t have to choose between these two approaches — you can absolutely enhance accessibility on your own while working with a partner to achieve a high level of compliance.
AudioEye provides a comprehensive suite of tools and resources for organizations of every size. Our Accessibility Platform is designed to find (and in some cases) fix) issues before they impact users, and our human-based expert assessments find the issues that automation can’t catch.
Start building towards accessibility. Get a free website scan or schedule a demo to see how AudioEye can help.
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