accessiBe Review is the detailed review of accessiBe which is a powerful AI-based web accessibility solutions for ADA and WCAG. Stay tuned to read in the full detail.
Enacted in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in areas of public life including business services in the digital space. Its purpose is to ensure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.
For businesses with a web presence, the required accommodations under the ADA include, for example, making their websites compatible with interface devices designed for the visually impaired and interpretive tools for the hearing impaired.
Put simply, ADA compliance means having web accessibility features baked into your business website that allow people with disabilities to navigate the website and use it. Businesses must provide accessibility for a wide range of disabilities to be in compliance with the ADA.
If your business is using a website that isn’t compliant with ADA standards, you could potentially face legal repercussions in the form of web accessibility lawsuits. This can also lead to a loss in credibility with your customers, clients, and site visitors.
With this in mind, in this accessiBe review, we’ll dig deeper into the web accessibility platform accessiBe that’s designed to help businesses achieve ADA compliance.
Overview of accessiBe
accessiBe is a fully automated, AI-powered web accessibility solution for ADA and WCAG compliance. The platform is designed to scan, analyze, and adjust elements on web pages so that they’re in compliance with ADA and WCAG 2.1 guidelines.
accessiBe automatically scans your website to learn how it’s structured and how each one of the elements works. It then adjusts accessibility for each page element. The platform does this every 24 hours to ensure any new content you publish on your website is also accessible.
This way, you don’t have to manually keep track of changes to your site or enlist an expert to help you achieve compliance every time you create a new page.
With accessiBe, you can rest assured that your site is compliant with WCAG 2.1, ADA Title III, Section 508, and EAA/EN 301549. It provides certification and accessibility statements as well as a monthly compliance audit report.
The best part is that accessiBe is incredibly easy to install and get started with. All you have to do is insert a single line of JavaScript code into your website and accessiBe will take care of the rest.
accessiBe is designed for web development and web design agencies that regularly build websites for businesses. It’s also perfect for businesses that already have an online presence where ADA laws are applicable and would like to achieve compliance.
Compliance with Legislation and Web Accessibility Standards
Even though the ADA doesn’t provide strict compliance guidelines, ADA compliance can get very complex. For this reason, US courts have used WCAG 2.0 Level AA as a reference to assess the accessibility of websites.
So, although ADA grants flexibility in how you make your website accessible for people with disabilities, adhering to the WCAG 2.1 Level AA (the latest version at the time of this writing) success criteria is the best approach for achieving compliance.
accessiBe’s automatic AI technology takes most of the hard work off your hands. It’s designed to understand the web elements on your pages and how they function.
As we mentioned earlier in this review, it does this by scanning and analyzing your website every 24 hours and automatically making any necessary web accessibility adjustments to it. Since it runs every 24 hours, you can rest assured that any new content you add to your site will automatically be made accessible by accessiBe’s powerful AI technology.
Providing an Accessible Interface
In order to be ADA compliant, you need an accessibility solution that covers a wide range of disabilities. This helps ensure that your site accommodates users with visual and hearing impairments as well as other disabilities and allows them to browse the website easily. This means that you need to set up multiple accessibility options on your website.
The standout feature on offer with accessiBe is that it covers a wide range of disabilities to ensure full web accessibility for everyone. It does this with its robust accessibility adjustment interface that lets users adjust your website in real-time.
Here are some of the accessibility adjustment options available with accessiBe:
- Audio muting: Media content with audio that automatically starts playing and lasts longer than three seconds should have options to mute it as it can interfere with people using speech-based assistive technologies.
- Emphasizing links and titles: This lets people with visual impairments easily see hyperlinks and titles on pages.
- Font adjustments: This is especially useful for people with visual impairments as it allows them to adjust the size.
- Changing cursor size and color: People with visual impairments (like color blindness) should be able to change the cursor size and color on your website.
- Enabling a virtual keyboard: If different functionality on your website can be achieved using the keyboard, you should enable an on-screen keyboard that can be accessed using the mouse.
Automating Web Accessibility
As a business owner, making sure your site is compliant with the ADA is by no means easy. In addition, it can be an on-going process considering websites typically undergo design updates and content updates regularly. For example, if you want to run a new marketing campaign, you’ll have to design a new landing page which will also need to be ADA compliant.
accessiBe’s automated solution can help you achieve ADA compliance using the same AI-technology it uses for optimizing screen readers and keyboard navigation features.
The accessiBe AI starts by learning your website’s structure and components. It then uses ARIA attributes to provide meaningful data to assistive technologies, like screen readers. In addition to this, accessiBe can also scan images and provide alt text tags and descriptions. The platform also uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to extract embedded text from within images for screen readers.
accessiBe’s AI can automatically adjust the HTML of your website using JavaScript code making it easy to operate using a keyboard. This is how the platform helps optimize your website for keyboard navigation. It also adds a content skip and quick navigation menu to your website that makes it easy for users to quickly access pages without going through the entire web page.
accessiBe Plans and Pricing
accessiBe offers four pricing plans based on the number of pages on your site:
- Standard – $490 per year: Designed for websites with under 1,000 unique pages. This plan suits business sites, portfolio sites, and landing pages.
- Large – $990 per year: Designed for websites with under 10,000 unique pages. This plan is ideal for online magazines and businesses that frequently update their site’s content such as membership sites.
- Huge – $1,490 per year: Designed for websites with under 100,000 unique pages. This plan is perfect for larger business websites that frequently add or update landing pages and content.
- Jumbo – $3,500 per year: Designed for websites with under 1,000,000 unique pages. This plan is great for enterprise users that frequently update content and design, organize events, or have a member-facing site.
It’s also worth mentioning that accessiBe offers a 7-day trial (with no credit card required) on all of their plans.
Conclusion
As an online business owner, you’re responsible for making sure everyone can access your website with ease, including people with disabilities. For this reason, it’s important to make sure your site is ADA compliant. The easiest way to ensure this is by using a web accessibility platform like accessiBe.
To sum up, accessiBe review, let’s wrap up with the pros and cons of the platform.
Pros and Cons of accessiBe
- Incredibly easy to set up and get started with.
- No technical knowledge or coding experience required.
- Automatically scans your website to ensure all elements are ADA-compliant.
- Adds an accessibility adjustment interface to the front-end giving users control.
- Can’t make videos and other resources hosted on external servers accessible.
Are you taking steps to ensure your site is ADA compliant? Let us know in the comments section below.
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