accessiBe Uses Artificial Intelligence to Achieve Web Accessibility and ADA Compliance

Zac Johnson
codeburst
Published in
16 min readOct 19, 2020

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Given the need for compliance and the growing number of digital services that need to have more inclusive access, web accessibility is no longer a trivial or low-priority concern for business websites.

According to one Pew Internet Project survey, 54% of adults with disabilities use the internet. However, based on a recent analysis of the top 1 million websites by WebAIM, 98.1 percent of home pages have compliance issues with the Web Accessibility Guidelines 2 (WCAG 2). Also, the study reports that 97.8% of internal pages do not pass WCAG 2 standards. “Significant work remains to be done to make the web accessible to everyone,” the study concludes.

The most common failures detected were low contrast text, missing alternative text for images, empty links, absence of form input labels, and missing document language. These failures are not difficult to address. The problem is that many website owners fail to pay attention to such issues. Many businesses view it as a tedious and costly process, and would rather focus on other aspects of web development. However, accessibility is important in for both global regulation compliance as well as ensuring that a website is optimized for better searchability.

accessiBe offers a compelling solution to address all of these failures. It leverages artificial intelligence (AI) in automating accessibility compliance for websites. According to its Vision Statement, accessiBe seeks to make the internet fully accessible to persons with disabilities (PWDs) by 2025.

The question is this: can accessiBe’s web accessibility solution live up to the task? Does it have the right combination of features and functions to deliver the desired outcomes for 98% of all pages online? Read this accessiBe review to learn more about this promising web accessibility enabler.

The Importance of Web Accessibility

Before examining the different features of accessiBe, it’s worth discussing why web accessibility is necessary in the first place. Why should businesses, organizations, or even government agencies spend time and resources to make their websites accessible to people who have hearing difficulties, visual impairment, cognitive disorders, and other disabilities?

Disability in the context of web accessibility is not limited to inherited physical and mental handicaps. It includes the visual and auditory challenges faced by older people, as well as the motor faculty problems suffered by those who experience harmful accidents. Neglecting this group of potential customers or site visitors means foregoing potential sales or ad revenues.

Aside from the sales or page impression significance of web accessibility, there’s also the regulatory concern that website owners should bear in mind. The failure to comply with accessibility legislation such as the ADA, Section 508, EAA/EN301548, or ACA/AODA can result in inconveniences or even serious legal problems. First offenses of ADA Title III, for example, entail penalties ranging from $55,000 to $75,000. Subsequent violations can set a business back $150,000.

In other words, web accessibility is important in expanding a site’s customer or user base (to include people with disabilities) and to prevent complaints that can lead to litigation. Cases have been filed against giant companies like Netflix, Nike, and Domino’s Pizza over web accessibility. The same can happen to any business.

The good news: You don’t have to worry about the nitty-gritty of implementing the standards required by the aforementioned laws if you use accessiBe, since it is designed to automatically and dynamically apply changes so as to make any website compliant with these standards.

It’s not even necessary to run a test to determine the specific failures in adopting web accessibility standards. All issues are addressed once the acessiBe script is installed. You don’t have to know them, although it would be preferable if you get yourself acquainted with these issues.

However, if you insist on doing a test so you can identify the web accessibility issues in your site, accessiBe also provides a useful tool, the aCe tool.

The aCe Web Accessibility Tool

The aCe web accessibility checker is designed to determine if a page complies with the WCAG and ADA standards. It can examine a single page, and it can also generate an initial report for your website, which includes a checklist of common accessibility issues that need to be addressed.

aCe will send you a WCAG 2.1 AA Level Web Accessibility Audit, and it will provide you information regardless of whether your website passes or fails each of these requirements. aCe provides a score whether your website is compliant, semi-compliant, or non-compliant to these accessibility standards.

A web accessibility standard’s compliant homepage does not mean that the entire website is fully compliant. This is why accessiBe’s automatic AI-driven web accessibility solution is far better compared to manually addressing each and every one of these concerns.

Making every page accessible manually requires a great deal of time and effort. It entails meticulous scrutiny of individual pages and making necessary changes into the site’s code itself to ensure everything has adequate accessibility features. With accessiBe, all you need to do is to insert a script into the website’s code.

accessiBe’s aCe presents an overall assessment (compliant or non-compliant) and provides specific details covering several categories, namely clickables, titles, orientation, menus, graphics, forms, document, readability, carousels, tables, and general. Scores are provided for every category along with a checklist of standards that have been met or missed.

The information generated by aCe should provide you with a good idea of how to improve your site’s web accessibility. In most cases, aCe makes it clear that manual changes are not the way to go. It is considerably faster and more cost-efficient to rely on an automatic method like what accessiBe offers.

Web Accessibility Made Fast and Simple

accessiBe is a fully automated web accessibility solution that draws on machine learning to analyze sites and provide the necessary changes to make them compliant with WCAG, ADA, AODA, ACA, EAA/EN301548, Section 508, and other web-accessibility standards.

The system employs two applications working simultaneously to enable the needed changes in a site. One application provides the interface that allows users to adjust the appearance and behavior of a site. Another one works in the background, utilizing artificial intelligence to optimize a website for screen readers, keyboard navigation, and other accessibility tools.

A platform-agnostic solution, accessiBe works with any site created using different content management systems (CMS) and platforms. It is compatible with all operating systems and web browsers. It can also make mobile versions of websites accessible.

Moreover, accessiBe does not have special requirements for websites to work with it. You will not be asked to install or integrate specific accessibility platforms. This solution is created to take advantage of what most web users already typically use. The text narration and voice-based navigation of websites, for example, tap the built-in narrator and voice recognition systems of Windows, OSX, and other commonly used operating systems.

Through machine learning, accessiBe analyzes pages that are not optimized for blind people, so they can work with popular accessibility tools such as Windows Narrator and Speech Recognition. accessiBe does not only try to read texts on a page, it also utilizes advanced image recognition technology to determine page elements that should be readable to screen readers. These include alt tags, icons, buttons, product images, ARIA attributes, state controls, forms, validations, and the texts in pop-ups, alerts, as well as modal and utility windows.

How Does accessiBe Work?

accessiBe does not change the way a website works. It does not permanently add new functions or alter existing ones. What it is designed to do is to provide a way to dynamically modify the appearance and behavior of the page that users are viewing to suit their needs and preferences.

After installing the accessiBe code, an accessibility interface appears on the site, similar to what you can find on the example site below.

By default, it appears as the PWD icon. However, if you use the customized code, the accessibility button can also look like any of the following:

There’s also an option to use accessibility text links. Clicking on the link or icon brings out accessiBe’s full interface for accessibility adjustments.

This interface can be moved to the left or right side of a page by clicking on the ray (line with arrows on both ends) button. It provides a wide range of options to temporarily alter the appearance and behavior of a website.

accessiBe makes it possible to implement various content adjustments including font resizing, title highlighting, link highlighting, content scaling, text magnification, text alignment, and letter spacing.

It also enables color adjustment, which lets users set a dark contrast, light contrast, high saturation, low saturation, or monochrome scheme. Text, title, and background colors may also be altered.

Additionally, accessiBe supports orientation adjustments. The options include muting sound, hiding images, displaying a virtual keyboard, suspending animations, masking reading, hover highlighting, cursor appearance modification, and the appearance of a reading guide. The reading guide is a bold straight line that helps readers to focus on lines of texts.

As part of an initiative to find simpler, faster, and more comprehensive ways for users to quickly start browning content, accessiBe’s accessibility profiles were created and are the first thing to greet a user.

The profiles bundle together common accessibility combinations that work together to address the needs of a specific disability. These are all features that are offered throughout the interface but by choosing just one profile, all of the accessibility adjustments are activated simultaneously. This way, a user can get back faster to the content that they want to browse.

For example, people who suffer from seizures when exposed to flickering lights or flashing displays, for instance, can activate the Epilepsy Safe Profile. Once the profile is clicked, the colors of the site will be immediately dulled and any moving animations such as gifs will be paused automatically requiring no further interference from the user.

accessiBe delivers an excellent job with its dynamic site modification. It works with any kind of website, from sites that use standard templates to those built with responsive design and the trendy long/infinite scrolling HTML5 pages. Some web accessibility platforms offer similar modifications, but they don’t usually work with highly-customized sites. accessiBe does everything seamlessly and virtually error-free.

What Makes accessiBe Different?

Arguably, accessiBe is in a league of its own. There are no similar systems that compare with it. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate web accessibility and provide the appropriate solutions can be considered as pioneering. It is created to be contextually aware and capable of learning from the different scenarios users put it through.

Investors have also taken notice of the longer-term potential of utilizing AI for web accessibility. accessiBe recently announced a $12 million Series A fundraise from K1 Capital.

Beyond Cosmetic Changes

Several web accessibility tools already exist. You can find plugins and free scripts that can modify sites to some degree to make them more web-accessible. However, most of these tools can be characterized as superficial as they are only designed to address the basic problems of accessibility and do not directly address compliance with web accessibility standards and regulations. For example, these other plugins can deal with the need to change font sizes and spacing, text and background colors, contrast, and other common concerns. They may also stop animations on a page or hide images and other unimportant elements to help those with focus problems. However, they don’t go any deeper than this. As mentioned earlier, accessiBe uses AI to scan a page and determine if there are page elements that need to be modified to be compatible with commonly used accessibility tools.

With other tools, product thumbnails or images on a page may contain texts in which can help in enabling voice-based navigation but are not properly tagged in a site’s code. With accessiBe, website owners don’t have to revisit their code and apply the necessary changes. accessiBe will automatically provide the useful tags to support unconventional site navigation for people with disabilities.

Taking Health Issues Into Account

Let’s take a deeper look into how accessiBe addresses people with disabilities through analyzing its technology for epileptic users. Aside from the changes in the way a site looks and behaves, accessiBe can become an indispensable tool for people who suffer from epilepsy. Web pages and multimedia content shared online can contain media that can trigger epileptic attacks. For example, flashing lights and certain visual patterns can induce seizures.

It is estimated that around one percent of people worldwide have epilepsy, and some three percent of that number have photosensitive epilepsy. These are not insignificant numbers for website owners to ignore. One (or a few) of them can be a potential lawsuit against your site. They can drag you to court, disrupt your operations, and tarnish your business reputation.

As pointed out earlier, accessiBe provides different accessibility profiles for different people. Epilepsy Safe Profile is one of them. Activating this profile makes any website unlikely to trigger seizures by removing flashing animations, hiding potentially dangerous patterns and images, and toning down the high-contrast site color schemes.

The rest of the profiles address many other disabilities in the same way, first and foremost considering the health benefits of people with disabilities to ensure they have a safe and fair digital experience.

Providing Unparalleled Scalability

Moreover, accessiBe is arguably the right solution for businesses that need to make their numerous sites web accessible. It works with websites with any number of pages. It also offers different pricing plans suitable for the varying needs of businesses. For example, a small business that is still growing its online presence can get the basic plan and upgrade as the need arises.

Again, only a single line of script needs to be inserted into a site’s code to deploy accessiBe. There are no manual optimizations and configurations needed, although you can customize the script and appearance if needed. accessiBe’s AI-powered system analyzes a site and provides the needed improvements through an interface while ensuring that your website is accessible and compliant throughout.

Easy Setup and Implementation

How fast and simple is it to use accessiBe? It’s as easy as signing up for an account, adding your website details, and inserting the accessiBe code into your site. You will need to wait up to 48 hours, depending on the size of your website. During this time, accessiBe needs to analyze the website and provide the necessary customizations to enable web accessibility.

There is no client software to download, install, and maintain. You just have to insert a single line of code to your website’s HTML. No need to worry about configuring a web-based application. Anyone with enough technical know-how and access to their website’s code can make their sites web accessible with accessiBe.

A concise and easy-to-digest demonstration is available on accessiBe’s website. Click on the accessibility icon at the upper right corner to view the Accessibility Adjustments Menu.

Getting Started — Account Signup

To sign up for an account, click on the “Start Free Trial” button on the top right corner of the accessiBe website. The process should take around a minute. You will not be required to do an email or identity verification. The account is created shortly after you click on the “Create Account” button.

Your account dashboard (seen in the screenshot below) will be displayed right after your account is created.

If you can’t see the account dashboard, click on your account name near the top right corner of the site.

Adding a Website

On your account dashboard, click on the “My Websites” tab so you can add your site. You will only be adding the domain name of your site here. You don’t have to do any configuration or setup.

Installing the accessiBe code

The most crucial part of using accessiBe is the installation of accessiBe’s script into your site. It’s essentially a two-step process:

  1. Copy the script
  2. Paste it on your website’s code.

The basic accessiBe code is as follows:

Click on the </>Installation tab in your account dashboard to start the script installation process.

Script installation can be basic or advanced.

  1. Basic installation. This is the default method wherein you just have to click on the “Send Instructions” option and enter your email address to get the instructions on where to paste the accessiBe installation script in your site’s code. The script is ready to copy from the .</>Installation tab of your accessiBe account dashboard.
  2. Advanced installation. Advanced installation can take around 10 minutes as it involves customizations. You will be asked to indicate your preferred interface language, interface lead color, trigger button color, interface position, mobile availability, and more. You may not change any of these, but that means using the default values or doing the basic installation.

In the advanced installation, you have to click on the “Generate Custom Script” button after entering your customizations. Doing this will produce the customized installation script similar to the readily copyable script in basic installation. This line is what you will copy into your site’s code to complete the installation process.

accessiBe provides detailed installation guides for different content management systems including WordPress, Joomla, Wix, Volusion, Shopify, GTM, Squarespace, 3Dcart, Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Webflow, Drupal, PrestaShop, Site123, Concrete5, Web.com, Jimo, .NET Nuke, and Umbraco. Click on the button representing the CMS you are using to view the installation instructions. You can also go to the footer part of the accessiBe website to find the integrations and installation link, which leads to a comprehensive collection of installation guides.

accessiBe Performance and Practical Use

So far, there have been no significant issues reported by the tens of thousands of websites that are currently using accessiBe. The system is embedded in the official sites of many of the world’s top brands including Quicksilver, LonelyPlanet, Hilton, BMW, Belkin, Billabong, The Peninsula Hotels, Kappa, Intex, Seiko, Shimano, Avon, DC, Linksys, Perdue, Lexus, Trend Micro, Volvo, Sitepoint, and Pods. It is also being used by popular websites such as SmallBizTrends and The Next Web.

accessiBe works asynchronously with the websites it integrates with, which means that the application and website are loaded separately. This setup helps mitigate page loading and performance issues. accessiBe does not interfere with (or affect) the integrity of a website’s code.

This asynchronous nature, combined with accessiBe’s user interface customizability, makes it an excellent third-party web accessibility solution. It is noninvasive, and its appearance can be modified to suit the design or color scheme of any website.

accessiBe Pricing

accessiBe offers monthly and annual pricing schemes in four plans: Standard, Large, Huge, and Jumbo.

accessiBe’s Standard monthly plan, which covers less than 1,000 unique pages, is offered at $49 a month. For bigger needs, the following are offered:

  • Large (<10,000 unique pages) at $99/mo
  • Huge (<100,000 unique pages) at $199/mo
  • Jumbo (<1,000,000 unique pages) $349/mo

You can save around 20% on your full-year subscription fees if you choose annual billing. The annual Standard, Large, Huge, and Jumbo plans only cost $490, $990, $1,990, and $3,490 per year respectively.

All plans come with the same features or functions. The only difference is in the number of unique pages they cover. They also provide monthly accessibility compliance audits, automatic cloud updates, as well as daily monitoring and scans.

It is difficult to find similar services to compare accessiBe’s prices with. However, it is safe to say that it is cheaper to get accessiBe than to get involved with web accessibility lawsuits. A web accessibility audit for a ten-page site alone can already cost around $1,600. Legal fees for non-compliance litigations can come out around $20,000 if not more.

accessiBe does not have a free version, but it offers a 7-day free trial to let you have a glimpse of the advantages you can get in using an automatic and AI-driven web accessibility service.

Partnership Program

accessiBe runs a partnership program for web designers and developers, marketing agencies, and freelancers. The program grants a partner account after an applicant goes through a demo with an accessiBe partnership manager. Through this partner account, child accounts can then be created for clients. The partner account gets a 20% commission or discount for every license purchased by clients registered under the partner account.

Customer Support

accessiBe provides customer support through email and live chat. If you have inquiries, complaints, or other concerns, click on the persistent chat button on the bottom right corner of the accessiBe website. To send an email, go to the site’s Support page and find the Contact Sales or Contact Support button.

accessiBe has a comprehensive searchable online knowledge base. Consider skimming through it. Answers to questions about installation, integration, customization, troubleshooting, and other topics are readily provided there.

Conclusion

Organizations of whatever size or type can benefit from accessiBe’s instant web accessibility solution. It is not only a way to accommodate persons with various handicaps. It is also an excellent solution to avoid web accessibility-related litigation and to improve website usability, potentially leading to more conversions or sales.

Lawsuits stemming from internet accessibility complaints may sound insignificant, but they can take away precious time and resources that should be used on more important concerns. They can also adversely affect business reputation.

accessiBe is a convenient solution for enabling web accessibility without the need to learn coding or advanced technical skills. It also does not require users to become well-versed with different web accessibility standards and laws. Additionally, it does not involve the use of an application you need to maintain, update, or troubleshoot. If you encounter problems (which is going to be a rarity) all you need to do is to contact customer support. With accessiBe’s speedy deployment and intuitiveness, it can become the key to making all pages web accessible by 2025.

Web accessibility is mandatory, it’s not a privilege anymore. It only takes a few minutes to get set up, and you can experience the benefits as soon as accessiBe’s AI engine analyzes your website and deploys the dynamic accessibility adjustments.

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Entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in the world of online marketing, business and branding.