General

Web accessibility ensures that websites and digital content can be used by people with disabilities, including visual, auditory, cognitive, and mobility impairments.

We believe accessibility is a matter of equity and ethics. No one deserves to be excluded because of disabilities they can’t control. Beyond that, there are many compelling reasons digital experiences should be accessible, including:

• Compliance with laws (e.g., ADA, Section 508).
• Reaching a wider audience of people with disabilities. According to the CDC, 28.7% of adults in the U.S. have some sort of disability.
• Improving the experience for everyone, as most people face accessibility challenges at some point or another—from struggling to see their screen in bright sunlight to getting injured in a way that impairs motor function.
• Improving SEO. Search engine robots that crawl sites for content can access and understand your site better if it has an accessible content structure and can be navigated by keyboard.
• Creating an experience that is beautiful—and usually cheaper, as accessible design done well leads to a more intuitive, streamlined experience with less need to go back and fix things for different audiences.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a set of guidelines created to ensure web content is accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.

WCAG is not a law, but is commonly cited as a point of reference or precedence when litigating cases related to accessibility laws such as ADA or Section 508.

WCAG has three tiers:

• Level A: The absolute minimum required to address the most severe accessibility barriers for disabled users.
• Level AA: What most organizations strive for, and the most commonly cited level in legal precedent. Level AA includes everything from Level A and incorporates additional guidelines to ensure that your site is accessible to the majority of users with disabilities.
• Level AAA: In addition to everything in Level AA, Level AAA adds guidelines to ensure optimum accessibility for disabled users. Level AAA is worth striving for where possible but not strictly required unless you’re a government agency or other organization that requires Section 508 compliance.

Most health and wellness organizations, government sites and many NGO’s strive for AAA. Most other organizations strive for AA.

Vision impairments like blindness, low vision, and color blindness, hearing impairments, motor disabilities, and cognitive or learning disabilities are just a few of the more common disabilities to consider when designing with accessibility in mind.

• Most people have disabilities actually at some point in their lives. For example, you might break your wrist and have impaired motor function. Or you might be in a non-ideal environment, e.g., trying to navigate a site on your mobile phone on a bright sunny day, or on a subway train with spotty connectivity.
• If you’re not temporarily disabled, most people still appreciate the simplicity and clarity of accessible design and functionality. For example, closed captioning was invented as an accessibility feature for the deaf, but people with excellent hearing often use it and enjoy it!

Yes. In the U.S., the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 require accessible digital content for public services and companies. In Europe, the European Accessibility Act is expected to go into effect in 2025.