What SaaS Companies Need in a Digital Accessibility Solution: More Than Just a Quick Fix

For SaaS businesses, digital accessibility is more than a compliance item: It’s a fundamental component of the product. Accessibility is core to the user experience, and if an SaaS product isn’t accessible, it’s unusable for a significant portion of the consumer base.

Worldwide, over a billion people live with disabilities. Unfortunately, many SaaS providers have ignored this audience. Historically, companies have often relied on quick fixes for the purposes of compliance with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). That’s a short-sighted approach, but it’s somewhat understandable — it’s easier to justify the costs of a one-time scan or an accessibility widget than it is to rebuild a product from the ground up. 

But the core of the SaaS business model relies on user adoption, engagement, and retention, all of which suffer when the product isn’t designed to be inclusive. True accessibility starts with a comprehensive solution that helps to establish digital accessibility as a core principle.

Below, we’ll explain how an accessible design helps SaaS businesses expand their market reach and improve the overall user experience. We’ll also discuss how to start building a digital accessibility strategy that’s comprehensive, effective, and sustainable.

Why SaaS Accessibility is Different — and Sometimes Harder

The dynamic nature of the SaaS model means that digital accessibility compliance is a moving target. A basic website might be updated quarterly; SaaS products are in a state of constant evolution, with companies prioritizing zero-downtime deployment strategies and using agile sprints to push out new features, bug fixes, and updates.

That approach to development creates significant challenges for accessibility. A new feature might introduce a host of issues for users with disabilities — and if developers aren’t in the habit of testing for accessibility on a regular basis, they’ll usually miss those issues. 

SaaS websites can present various other accessibility concerns:

• Custom UI components: Interactive dashboards, drag-and-drop interfaces, and complex modal dialogs can create a compelling experience for some users, but they are a primary source of accessibility failures. Automated scanning tools often struggle to interpret the intended function and state of these custom components, leading to a false sense of security where a scan comes back "clean" — while the component remains completely inoperable for a person who uses assistive technology.

• Third-party integrations: Modern SaaS applications are ecosystems, often built by integrating numerous third-party services for functions like payment processing, customer support chat, user analytics, or social media logins. All third-party components must be checked for accessibility and monitored regularly, as an update to an integrated service could introduce new accessibility issues.

• User expectations: When people pay for a subscription, they assume that the software will work predictably in a variety of environments. The principles of digital accessibility are aligned with the best practices of UX design, and software that isn’t designed with those principles in mind will fail to fulfill user expectations. 

Put simply: the longer you wait to develop an accessibility strategy, the more time you’ll spend on fixing accessibility issues. A sizable accessibility debt can be a serious issue — especially if you’re hit with a digital accessibility lawsuit.

The Problem with Quick-Fix Accessibility Tools

The good news is that digital accessibility is a strong investment. If you start with a well-rounded strategy, your investment will help you create a better product and reach more users — but there’s no such thing as an “instant fix.”

When a website is complex and dynamic, quick-fix accessibility tools — like accessibility overlays — can do more harm than good. They often interfere with assistive technologies, and they’re prone to false positives and false negatives. However, quick-fix options pose especially significant accessibility issues for SaaS companies:

• Custom components: Because SaaS websites use custom interface components, overlays can interfere with basic functionality, negatively impacting the user experience. 

• Overreliance on automation: Automation-only web accessibility tests can miss issues that impact the experiences of real users. 

Limited support: Quick “solutions" rarely provide support for developers or product teams. They’re geared towards small, simple websites, so product support is geared towards those types of customers.

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What a SaaS-Friendly Solution Should Include

Your accessibility solution should be part of your development process — not a “fix" that you add to the product after the fact. It should help your team develop a deep understanding of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the international standards for accessibility. 

It should promote best practices while also providing your team with the full benefits of accessible design: more engaged users, better retention rates, and cleaner code. With that in mind, here are some features you should look for when choosing an accessibility solution.

Scalable Auditing and Monitoring

Scalability is a priority in SaaS development. Your product is always growing and changing, and your accessibility solution needs to be capable of monitoring those changes and providing actionable, real-time feedback. 

Look for solutions that provide ongoing monitoring and automated fixes as this can help you stay on top of compliance and accessibility. For example, AudioEye’s Active Monitoring tests content for new issues every time a user loads a page. With real-time testing, you can catch and fix WCAG violations while minimizing the impact on real-life users. 

Developer Tools and Focused Feedback

To fix custom code, you need code-level descriptions of potential accessibility barriers. Look for solutions with solid support for integrations with GitHub or your business’s ticketing system.

Your accessibility partner should be capable of providing actionable guidance, not just links to WCAG documentation. If your dev team needs to do in-depth research about why a certain issue is a problem — and how it can be fixed without disrupting the product — they’ll have less time to spend on the actual fixes. 

Automated + Expert Testing

No automated solution can fix every accessibility issue. That’s especially true within the SaaS sector: Even the most advanced tools will struggle when evaluating custom UI components, and false positives can be just as time-consuming as false negatives.

Using a combination of automated and expert testing can help you find and fix more accessibility issues and ensure compliance with accessibility requirements. A hybrid approach provides the highest possible level of compliance with laws like the ADA, the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), and a host of other international digital accessibility laws. 

Take AudioEye’s hybrid approach for example. We combine powerful automation with human-assisted AI technology to help you detect and fix accessibility issues and ensure ongoing compliance with accessibility laws.

Legal and Standards Expertise

An accessibility solution should be built upon the globally recognized standards for web content: WCAG. The current version, WCAG 2.1, provides a detailed framework for making digital products more useful for folks with disabilities.

Your accessibility partner should explicitly map their services and technology to WCAG 2.1 (or 2.2) Level AA requirements. They should also understand that the legal landscape is not uniform. SaaS companies with a national or international customer base must navigate a patchwork of regulations, such as California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which can impose significant statutory damages for non-compliance. 

Ongoing Training and Documentation

Technology and automated testing are only part of a sustainable accessibility strategy. To prevent accessibility issues from being introduced in future development sprints, your team needs to build its own expertise. A SaaS accessibility partner should provide ongoing accessibility training resources that empower developers, designers, and content creators to understand accessibility principles and apply them to their work.

Look for a solution that assists in creating and maintaining a public accessibility statement, which communicates your commitment to accessible design — and your current progress — to your users. Your accessibility partner should also be capable of delivering a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), a formal document that details how your product addresses the technical requirements of accessibility laws. A VPAT is a key requirement for B2B and government sales, so it’s often essential for market expansion.

A blank web page shows the accessibility symbol, a magnifying glass, and an accessibility score of 87.

What to Watch Out for When Evaluating Vendors

Not all accessibility solutions are created equal, and some quick-fix overlays may actually increase your risk of a digital accessibility lawsuit. For the highest level of compliance, pay attention to the details.

Here are a few indications that an accessibility tool isn’t appropriate for SaaS:

• The solution offers an instant fix: Certain issues can be fixed automatically, but developers and designers will need to learn about WCAG and perform some accessibility fixes. Be wary of services that treat accessibility as something that can be fixed immediately with a third-party integration. 

• No mention of WCAG or assistive technology: WCAG is the standard for digital accessibility, period. If a service doesn’t mention WCAG, steer clear — and if the marketing materials fail to mention assistive technology users, it’s likely that the tool isn’t designed to facilitate actual UX improvements.

• No support (or limited support) for developers or designers: For long-term compliance, accessibility needs to become part of your business’s mission. Your accessibility solution should help your team create tickets, learn new skills, and develop with accessibility in mind. 

• The solution provides no legal support: If a service can’t clearly explain how they reduce your legal risk — or what steps they’ll take if your business faces an accessibility lawsuit — they don’t provide significant protection. Look for solutions that discuss specific legal obligations (such as ADA Title III, ADA Title II, and Section 508 in the United States) and their strategies for compliance.

AudioEye: The Comprehensive Accessibility Solution for SaaS Companies

The core of the SaaS business model suffers when a product is not built to be inclusive. The dynamic and complex nature of SaaS platforms means that quick-fix overlays and one-time audits are insufficient — they simply fail to address the root causes of inaccessibility.  

A true accessibility solution must support the way SaaS companies work. It should provide scalable monitoring for continuous deployment cycles, along with developer-focused feedback that integrates into existing workflows. 

That’s where AudioEye comes in.

AudioEye is designed to meet the unique (sometimes challenging) needs of SaaS organizations, allowing companies to achieve and maintain compliance while delivering a better experience for every user. We do this with our three-pronged approach to accessibility, combining powerful automation, human-assisted AI technology, and testing throughout the development process. Plus, with AudioEye Assurance, you’ll have peace of mind knowing your content is 400% more protected than automation or consulting-only approaches.

Put simply, AudioEye helps you achieve industry-leading compliance with accessibility standards and peace of mind that your digital content is legally protected.

Ready to see how AudioEye can benefit your SaaS organization? Get started with a free accessibility scan. Or schedule a demo to see AudioEye’s capabilities first-hand.