If you are looking for accessibility solutions for your organization’s website, there are many solutions available in the market. All of these solutions claim to achieve compliance with ADA and WCAG 2.1 guidelines. Most of these solutions need extensive website programming and development and cost thousands of dollars. These companies usually start with an audit that generates a detailed report about the website’s accessibility problems. Although audits are an effective way to understand your company’s web accessibility issues, they can take a lot of time to identify the shortcomings.
The other type of solution that is preferred by many businesses is overlay interfaces. These interface solutions can be two types. Some interfaces are tool-based that can create several issues that we will discuss later in the article. The other kind of interface is a custom JavaScript overlay. Such a solution has many advantages.
- It can make your website ADA compliant within a short time and save your organization from facing a lawsuit.
- You can make 3rd party services on your website accessible even without access to their source code.
- The products and services on your website are immediately available for sale to users with disabilities.
- They can be used to fix critical accessibility issues without the intervention of specialized development teams.
Let’s take the example of accessiBe:
It is a JavaScript-based AI-powered web accessibility solution that can be added to your website by you or any member of your team. It does not need a team of developers or designers to get implemented. It can scan and process the existing content on your website within 48 hours to make it WCAG and ADA compliant. The fully automated solution can also add alt texts and other accessibility semantics to the web pages. It also scans and updates the website accessibility of your company every 24 hours.
At the user end, it provides an interface that can be adjusted by the person to make the website accessible based on his or her needs. It can change the way the website looks to make it accessible for visual impairments. The accessibility interface can also get accessed by assistive technologies, such as screen readers or present a virtual keyboard.
Avoid Tool-Based Overlays
Many people in the accessibility industry do not regard tool based overlays as complete accessibility solutions. These overlays need to be downloaded as plugins or widgets by users before they can make the website accessible. That means the user has to learn to use the toolbar before they can use the website. Tool based overlays are a generalized approach that attempts to meet the requirements of all types of disabilities. But in reality, they can fulfill none of them and contribute very little to the website accessibility.
The biggest problem with these tool base overlays is that they cannot be supported by assistive technologies such as screen readers or screen magnifiers. Instead, the toolbars provide their own set of assistive methods. They expect the users to become an expert at using these methods instead of the assistive technologies that people are used to. Moreover, downloading and installing these toolbars introduces accessibility problems of their own. They also have limited solutions for mobile websites and often don’t work with apps. The scopes of these solutions are usually restricted to changing the color contrast or adding focus indicators. They also cannot fix missing semantics or add assistive device interaction to the website.
Advantages of JavaScript Solutions
JavaScript solutions are entirely different and have many advantages over tool based overlays or other types of accessibility software. These solutions can make accessibility adjustments to your website without interfering with the source codes. The software provides an ai powered solution that can add missing texts to your website, add alt texts to images and offer missing HTML attributes. It also corrects any errors in the content, elements, or HTML attributes. These solutions can be used by all types of input devices used by people with disabilities, such as screen readers, screen magnifiers, Braille readers, with or without a keyboard, so on and so forth. It also adds and modifies structural information on the website to make it look more organized for people with cognitive disabilities.
JavaScript-based solutions make comprehensive changes on your website to optimize accessibility in support of all kinds of disabilities. A good AI solution can rectify up to 95% of accessibility issues on your website. No other solutions claim to have such a high amount of success with web accessibility optimization. It also acts as an automated monitoring and testing tool that needs negligible interference.
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