Website accessibility issues cost your company dear and invoke hefty fines and legal suits. As a business owner, it is imperative you must make your site accessible to everyone, including users with physical disabilities. Large organizations have the means to hire expert developer teams for the task.
Small companies face the challenge as they lack the funds and the knowledge to fix site accessibility issues. Even if a business owner has some knowledge of coding and believes it will fix accessibility issues, the domain is highly complicated. If something goes wrong, invoke litigation. In short, it is a territory one should never tread- best to leave it to experts or invest in affordable accessibility overlays for the task.
An accessibility overlay and its salient advantages to a small company
When you are creating a website from the beginning, there are multiple reasons to invest in an overlay. However, they are ideal for small business websites more than large commercial or government-driven ones, as they can maintain their sites with an in-house development team to arrest accessibility issues.
Overlays differ as they are not created uniformly
Not all accessibility overlays are the same. They differ when it comes to expanse and quality. You should take some time to research them before you install them for your business. These overlays are cost-effective, and they protect your site’s source code. They merely sit on top of the code, hence the name “overlay,” without breaking existing code or making any sort of change to it. They merely take a snippet of your site’s JavaScript to fix accessibility issues and ensure content adjustments are made to make your site compliant and accessible at the same time.
Legacy content on your site – How does an accessibility overlay help?
Accessibility overlays are beneficial for legacy content on your site. In fact, this step should always be your topmost priority. Some companies have a huge volume of content that cannot be retrofitted on the site for accessibility that should project your core service/product along with its key pages. However, companies with an old web history often have hundreds or maybe thousands of legacy content. Often, they are flattened or converted into unsearchable and inaccessible PDFs- web pages often are on the path of dying; however, some of them are still live and create accessibility issues on your site.
Save costs with an accessibility overlay
The costs for dealing with this problem are astronomical; however, you can use an accessibility overlay to improve the site to the best extent. In the above context, make sure you have a statement on the site for public accessibility or a policy explaining why some web pages have an overlay.
It is significant for you to convey your intent and approach to people for understanding your purpose to boost accessibility and user experience and not run away from it. In this way, you can boost credibility and establish your presence online as a user-friendly business site accessible to everyone, including people with a physical disability, with success!
