Accessibility is a big deal. We don’t hesitate to think that applied to the “real” world. Of course, people with disabilities should be able to circulate the streets comfortably, which is why we have ramps and audible traffic lights for those who need them. But, what about web accessibility?
Sometimes it’s a little less obvious in the digital world. Not everyone who navigates the web is conscious of how difficult it can be to do so with a disability like lack of audition, sight, or others.
Not only do the people who are users of the internet fail to notice that sometimes, but more importantly, people who create websites might fail too. And that’s an issue.
Where we are
The WebAIM Million report evaluates the top one million websites. Its results “provide an overview of and insight into the current state of web accessibility for individuals with disabilities and trends over time.” The 2022 report has shown that across the one million home pages studied, over 50 million accessibility errors were detected – coming to an average of 50.8 errors per page. This means there was only a 1.1% decrease in errors compared to last year, where they found 51.4 errors per page.
What are these errors? Well, the six most common error types were:
- low contrast text (found in 89,3% of home pages)
- missing alt text for images (on 23,2% of all home page images, while 10.4% of images with alternative text had questionable or repetitive alternative text)
- empty links
- missing form input labels (39% of the 4.4 million form inputs identified were not correctly labeled, which is still a notable improvement from 45% in 2021)
- empty buttons
- missing document language – 77% of pages specified a document language.
A little alarming fact: the highest amount of errors detected on a single home page was 68,826!
What to do?
Now, what does this mean for both users and website owners?
According to what Roy Gefen, Chief Marketing Officer at accessiBe, explained in this article, one out of 4 people living with a disability in the U.S vocalizes their desire for equitable internet access. Over one billion people worldwide have a disability. This market accounts for a whopping $1.2 trillion in disposable income! And that’s not even counting the people like family and friends of people with disabilities, who prefer to support fully inclusive businesses. This means online business owners whose websites aren’t accessible are losing a pretty big amount of clients and revenue there.
“The business of making your website accessible is just that – good business. Website performance will elevate: one is likely to see a lift in engagement and click-through rates, and with an enhanced user experience comes stronger SEO.”, says Roy Gefen. On top of that, web accessibility lawsuits increased by 320% in the last few years, which simply raises the stakes.
The good news!
Even though the numbers are alarming, some tech giants have taken significant steps toward crushing this issue. Apple has recently announced soon-to-come accessibility features for all of its devices. This includes, among other features, real-time captioning for videos, podcasts, and calls such as FaceTime and “door mode”, a door detection mode that will allow the device to detect any door nearby plus any pertinent information posted on it (room number, address, open/closed, etc,) to alarm the user.
Fortunately, as we know not everyone has a deep understanding and knowledge of web accessibility, answers have been given. You don’t even need to hire an expert anymore: automated solutions are now available for everyone. We are partners with accessiBe, a company that works towards making the internet a more equitable place by giving easy-going solutions for online businesses who want to make their websites a good experience for every one of their potential customers.
Contact our experts to get more details about our partnership and how it can dramatically benefit your business, apart from, of course, making the (internet) world a better place.
