accessibility

The reality of the legal landscape when it comes to website accessibility is that different websites have different risks. These risks are based on where the business, organization, or owner is located; whether the site has eCommerce; and if it is tied to a physical location that accepts the general public (ie: a pizza place with a website).

For that, we offer plans to help your website be friendly to visitors, both fully able and those with disabilities. It is very common that accessibility improvements for disabled visitors also help all visitors.

For all of our plans, the website owner agrees that they will not fight us on any of the required changes and that they will follow the content creator guidelines whenever adding or modifying content.

Further, depending on the current state of the website, theme and/or plugin changes may be required in order to implement accessibility improvements in a maintainable manner (ie: your existing theme may be so bad there would have to be numerous overrides which would then have to be maintained, whereas moving to a new theme would not require overrides and will likely incur less cost to you).

How website accessibility for business works:

1. Choose the level that you would like your website (visitor essential, visitor friendly, or visitor comfortable).
2. Website accessibility audit of 5-15 pages of your site (recommended 5 for brochure sites, 10 for eCommerce, and 15 if you have a variety of page templates/types).
3. Zoom call to review the website accessibility audit and action items. At this point, you can choose to end services and work on your audit results yourself. You are not obligated to continue with services.
4. Estimate for remediation of the issues.
5. Remediation.
6. Maintenance of chosen website accessibility level.

How much does website accessibility remediation cost?

The cost varies based on the size, complexity, and number of issues that your site has. As a few examples:

• A small brochure website was corrected to visitor essential for $450 including changing out the website theme
• A large brochure site with few errors was corrected to visitor friendly for $500
• An eCommerce site was corrected to visitor comfortable for $1,600

Visitor Essential

This plan includes the most commonly cited accessibility issues in lawsuits. It’s designed for websites that are lower risk but still want to avoid the most common barriers to website accessibility.

• Accessibility Statement: a suggested statement will be provided as well as some references to statement practices.
• Checking that your cookie statement and privacy policy are easily accessible by keyboard users.
• Missing alt text: Your primary pages will be checked and corrected for alt text.
• Missing labels on forms: Your forms will be checked and corrected for appropriate labels and that they can be completely via a keyboard.
• Proper links: Your site will be checked for empty links, JS created links, inappropriate link text, redundant links, and clear differentiation of what a link is.
• Focus state: Your website will be checked for use of obvious focus state.
• Missing page titles & headings: Your site will be checked for appropriate page titles and heading structure.

This plan also includes the following best practices:

• Color contrast ratio of 3:1. The WCAG 2.1 level AA guidelines recommend a ratio of 4.5:1 for regular text, 3:1 for headings, and 3:1 for text to link. However, for this package, only a contrast ratio of 3:1 will be used. Many websites fail this basic test, and following this greatly improves the readability of your website.
• Skip to content link: Allow those using a screen reader to go directly to your content (skip your whole header). This is particularly essential for those with long menus.
• Navigable menu: We’ll check that someone can actually navigate your menu.
• No autoplay: We’ll check that none of your content automatically plays.

Visitor Friendly

This plan is designed for businesses that lower to moderate risk and want to not just avoid the most common barriers, but also want to create a more inclusive website experience. This plan includes everything in the visitor essential plan, as well as passing WCAG 2.1 level AA automated tests and checking your primary pages with keyboard and screen reader. Specifically, that means the following are included:

• Accessibility tool full checks: Your website will checked to WCAG 2.1 level AA using an automated tool.
• Aria checks: Check for proper use of Aria (in many cases when using HTML5 Aria is not needed).
• Audio checks: Check for captions, keyboard navigation of audio player.
• Video checks: Check for captions and or transcripts.
• Color contrast checks: Check for level AA contrast rules.
• HTML Code: Check for proper landmarks and structural items.
• Buttons & Links: Check that they are usable and show proper states.
• Form Elements: Check that they are usable and show proper states including errors.
• Headings: Proper order and without skipping.
• iFrames: Check for proper coding.
• Images: Check for proper alt text and that text is not embedded in the image or overlayed without sufficient contrast.
• Tables: Check for proper coding.

Additionally, your website will be checked with a screen-reader and keyboard navigation for issues.

Visitor Comfortable

This plan is designed for businesses with moderate to higher risk, but not such high risk that they need a detailed audit trail that can cost thousands of dollars. In this plan, the goal is to meet the intent of WCAG 2.1 level AA, even if 100% of the guidelines are not passed. These are guidelines after all, and not hard rules.

On this plan, you will need to agree that all those who enter or modify content will follow the extended content creator guidelines.

This level includes everything from visitor friendly as well as:

• Alternatives to any video & audio content.
• Logical structures and relationships in information.
• Keyboard and screen reader testing for all pages you want included in scope.
• Checks for keyboard shortcuts.
• No unneeded time limits, if they are present they can be adjusted.
• No moving content with user control.
• Automatic & manual code validation for name, role, and values.
• Audio descriptions for video content.
• No content that relies on screen orientation.
• Text resizing available and works without breaking site.
• Easy navigation & finding of all content that should be found.
• Consistent menus & navigation.
• Consistency in site navigation elements including icons & buttons.
• Helpful error messages to correct user data entry mistakes.
• Optional additional users for testing.

Ready to get started?

The first step is to request an audit. Audits are priced based on the number of pages and the level of audit you are requesting. We will take a quick look at your website before we accept it for an audit.

Once we take a quick look at your site we’ll send you an invoice for the audit and a timeline. The audit doesn’t get actually scheduled until payment is received. Typically, audits are completed in one week or less.

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