Meet accessiBe – Israeli Startup for Web Accessibility

Web accessibility has become a serious concern for businesses due to various lawsuits. Disabled consumers find it hard to interact with websites. Domino’s, for example, lost a lawsuit filed by a blind consumer Guillermo Robles when he failed to order a pizza from Domino’s website or app. There are several other instances where businesses have faced serious legal issues for inaccessible websites. More than 11,000 lawsuits were filed in 2019 which shows the importance of web accessibility.

What is Web Accessibility and Why it is Important for Businesses?

Accessibility refers to the ability to access a device, app, website, or product. Web accessibility refers to designing and developing websites that are easily accessible to users and consumers. If the website is designed and coded properly, people with disabilities can access and use it hassle-free. Research, however, shows that as much as 98% of websites have accessibility issues:

To make websites accessible to people with disabilities, businesses are forced to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standard that provides guidelines to businesses to make their content accessible. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act are the two laws that businesses have to follow to avoid lawsuits. These laws enforce that all people have equal rights to goods, services, and communication.

Having an accessible website, product, or app means:

• Your website and business will be accessible to everyone including disabled individuals. More than 61 million people are disabled in the US. 
• Your business will be ADA and WCAG compliant and you won’t be getting any legal notices from users. It will protect your business from lawsuits.
• Your business will have a competitive edge as 98% of websites have accessibility issues. It will get easier to stand out from the crowd.
• Your brand’s image, credibility, and reputation will improve significantly. Even if a person won’t take the legal route after having an accessibility issue, you’ll lose a customer. And it will eventually ruin your brand’s image.

accessiBe Uses Artificial Intelligence for Accessibility

Making your website accessible and compliant turns out to be a big task especially if you have a large website with thousands of pages like The Next Web. Accessibility services and plugins are the two most common solutions available with the former being too expensive with a 50% success rate and later doesn’t comply and has only a 5-15% success rate. An artificial intelligence-based tool accessiBe has made it simple and cost-effective for businesses to make their website accessible in under 48 hours with the highest success rate in the industry.

accessiBe is used by more than 50,000 websites globally including BMW, Fiverr, Seiko, Avon, Pacific Life, and more. accessiBe recently raised $12 million in funding and is all set to make the internet accessible by 2025.

With accessiBe, you can make your website accessible without dealing with any technicalities, coding, design tweaks, or doing anything special. You have to add a JavaScript code on your website and leave the rest on accessiBe’s AI technology. It is a set and forget accessibility tool.

It will scan your website within 48 hours automatically and will make it fully compliant to WCAG, ADA, Section 508, EAA/EN, and others. It will then scan your website every 24 hours to inspect for changes and revisions. Your website is accessible and compliant 24/7 without you having to do anything at all.

Visitors will see an icon on your website like this:

When website visitors click the icon, this is what they see:

Visitors can choose their profile and add relevant features to access your website with ease. It supports screen adjustment, keyboard navigation, and UI and UX adjustments. You can customize the accessibility interface, so it merges with your brand guidelines.

The new content, elements, and pages you add are automatically scanned by accessiBe and are made accessible by its artificial intelligence technology. This saves you from doing any manual work on your website to make it compliant.

A Step Towards Making the Internet Accessible

Making the internet, websites, apps, products, ecommerce stores, and everything accessible to disabled individuals isn’t just necessary but it is the need of the time. As a business, you are socially responsible to ensure your website and content is accessible to everyone. It will benefit you, your audience, community, society, country, and eventually everyone in the world.

For an ongoing stream of updates make sure to visit accessiBe on Twitter.