Thursday the 20th of May is Global Awareness Accessibility Day 2021.
Like most years it will more than likely go by unnoticed by the vast majority of people. However for those that struggle to access the digital world it’s an opportunity to bring the plight of the day to day struggles that people with disabilities face on a daily basis.
The Disability Descrimination Act of 1992 requires that all Government and Council websites adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to ensure that their sites can be accessed by people with disabilities. One of the biggest problems with Government and council websites is the ongoing compliance to the accessibility standards that are required these days. The process of manual remediation is not only time consuming, costly to maintain and often gets overlooked. The high standards that the site was built to originally don’t transition through to new content and elements added to the site at a later stage. Thus making the site non compliant to the WCAG stands that are required.
No greater example was the Vaccine Clinic finder website launched in early 2021, which was based on a previously developed Health Direct Service Finder. A spokeswoman said the existing service finder was audited in 2018 and found to meet the accessibility standards. Fast Forward to 2021 even with the resources of the Federal Government and it failed terribly. In a recent review of a number of Federal, State and Local Government sites it’s just the tip of the unfortunate iceberg.
Having built 50+ Local Government websites over the years we know all too well the ongoing challenges that are faced to ensure that sites comply with the standards that go along with good Governance for Government and Councils. Maintaining the standards is no easy task for us let alone a layperson not trained in what makes every piece of new content comply.
There had to be an easier way to ensure the ongoing compliance of Government websites making them accessible for those with a disability and avoiding the costly daily remediation required by an expert.
That has now changed with Web123 partnering with Audioeye, the most trusted accessibility platform on the market. Audioeye’s patented technology tests for over 400 accessibility and compliance issues, and can fix more than 73% of errors on average, on day one, reducing the time to make content accessible. Audioeye’s unmatched AI scans your site for new issues with every site visitor, detecting and fixing hundreds of errors in seconds. Audioeye’s AI instantly improves the Accessibility Score by an average of 25 points by fixing 3x more than its nearest competitor. Making sites that once failed those with disabilities and the accessibility tests for the WCAG guidelines to now pass with flying colours.
If on no other day you want to show that you care about those with disabilities by making their life easier and show clear good Governance, reach out today for a free website audit on how the Audioeye product can resolve the issues of WCAG compliance once and for all.