In the last few days, several clients have reported receiving an email via their website contact form from “Amy”, claiming the site is not accessible or compatible with a screen reader.
Members of the Australian web community have also flagged this, and there’s even a Whirlpool thread discussing it.
In all cases, the email address and content are identical. Interestingly, we haven’t received the email to our own website yet!
Whirlpool users suggest this email is likely spam, possibly originating from an organisation in Missouri, USA, attempting to drum up business by creating fear and then offering to “help”. Based on the generic Gmail address and the volume of reports, it’s quite likely these sites haven’t actually been tested.
Without getting into the ethics of using “accessibility” as a scare tactic, and acknowledging that we’re not accessibility specialists, here are a few points worth noting:
- Achieving full W3C/WCAG compliance is a complex and costly process, often tens of thousands of dollars for a large site. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it, but for perspective, even Australian government websites – which are legally required to meet an A rating – hire dedicated teams to manage compliance, and many still fall short of 100 percent.
- In Australia the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, but it doesn’t mandate full compliance for every website.
- Accessibility is best considered at the beginning of a website project. Retrofitting accessibility features after launch is always more time-consuming and expensive.
- Functional requirements often conflict with visual design goals. It’s a balancing act to deliver a site that looks good and behaves well, especially when a client has a specific aesthetic in mind that may impact accessibility.
What Can You Do?
One of the easiest accessibility fixes is ensuring all images have appropriate alt tags. Alt tags are descriptors that appear if an image fails to load, but more importantly, they’re read aloud by screen readers for visually impaired users.
In November 2018, Instagram introduced manual alt tag support, and Facebook has been auto-generating alt tags since 2016.
Most CMS platforms support alt text fields by default. However, if images aren’t named properly before upload, the auto-generated alt tag may simply reflect the filename – like “IMG1234” – which is unhelpful to screen readers.
Here’s a quick and easy fix:
- Accurately name your images.
- Check the generated alt tags after upload to ensure they describe the image clearly.
Accessibility is a specialised field, and there’s far more to explore than we can cover here. Google’s Web Fundamentals series includes helpful resources, and if you need to ensure full compliance, we recommend engaging an accessibility manager or agency. We’re happy to collaborate with them to help meet your requirements. If you’d like to see what an accessibility-focused project looks like, take a look at The Future Is Accessible in our portfolio.
If you’d like to test your site and identify any obvious issues, WAVE was recommended in the Whirlpool thread, and Rocket Validator is endorsed by AWIA.
Need help reviewing your site for accessibility basics? Get in touch.
