AI, Plugins, Overlays and Digital Accessibility

Today, AI appears to be everywhere, and many companies are turning to it to solve many technical problems they face in their daily working lives. I’ve chatted with folks whose use cases range from creating marketing campaign strategies to making travel plans for friend groups, and everything you can imagine in between. And while the technology has progressed quite far in the few years it’s been around, it’s still got some serious issues when trying to use it to solve real world problems, like middle school math problems or digital accessibility.

SOME HARD TRUTHS

When I’m speaking about digital accessibility, it’s often in the context of small business owners and nonprofits, specifically those seeking to be a vendor for government agencies. To qualify as a vendor, depending on the agency or agencies they seek to serve, they have to comply with the ADA and Section 508 standards, and in the US we rely upon the WCAG standards to meet them digitally. One of the “easiest” examples of the need for digital accessibility efforts I often provide to prospective clients is folks living with various visual impairments, and share stats from the American Foundation for the Blind, specifically instances where employees run into problems completing tasks independently up to 12 times per week with at least 2 of those instances not being able to be completed at all without outside intervention.

“What about AI, can’t that help?” is typically first question I’m asked when I share these facts, and I sadly have to dive deep into the world of litigation, rattling off tools that have tried to address digital accessibility with AI or a widget overlay, because the sad fact is that these tools don’t make a site accessible. I won’t dive into their claims, and how they’re often false, the overlayfalseclaims site based on this fact sheet, supported by over 400 accessibility experts does an excellent job of covering that information claim by claim. As for companies that have been subject to litigation, you can check out appendix a of the same site for a non-exhaustive list of nearly 200 cases that shows the defending company’s site and tools in question.

HOW CAN SW BITS, LTD. HELP?

We provide auditing with remediation recommendation reports, can actually execute minor remediation, Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR)/VPAT® authoring, coaching, and training all beginning with our very own POUR Method. When we work with clients, we leave behind this methodology so that small business owners and nonprofits can move forward in the digital space, empowered with this resource.

As SW Bits, Ltd. continues to grow in the digital accessibility space, we’re collecting resources in the form of sites, reports, articles, videos, blogs, and anything else that proves to be of use. Below you’ll find the YouTube playlist actively being compiled from other experts in the space, like Haben Girma, “The first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School, [and] is a human rights lawyer advancing disability justice,” and companies like Nielsen Norman Group, who are user experience (UX) experts conducting and providing many user research studies which SW Bits, Ltd. isn’t quite ready to begin conducting on it’s own.

TIME FOR ACTION

Digital Accessibility is a journey, not able to be completed in a one and done effort, and often requiring an expert in the field to help guide companies through the initial process and train them on ways to maintain those efforts going forward. That’s exactly what SW Bits, Ltd. is here for, utilizing the POUR Method.

Don’t let the flashy buzz tech catch your company off guard and exposed to possible litigation, loss of contracts, and missing out on 20% of the market represented by American adults living with disability that affects their independent use of the internet., book your free 30-minute video consultation today!

#a11y #wcag #accessibiltyconsultant #swbitsltd