Unlocking the Benefits of Comprehensive Accessibility Training
Accessibility has become an important goal for organizations, especially due to the increasing number of accessibility lawsuits. However, apart from legal compliance, accessibility is important for several reasons, from managing your digital presence to providing your employees with the necessary skills to deliver accessible services.
Let’s look at some of the benefits of accessibility training in more detail!
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Why is Comprehensive Accessibility Training Important?
Accessibility offers multiple benefits for your business, website, and customers. The key benefits of web accessibility are explained below.
1. It Helps Ensure Equal Access
Accessibility solutions promote equal access in your organization, making it a more inclusive and welcoming place for people with disabilities – employees or customers.
It also expands the reach of your business: it stands to benefit from a wider range of talent as well as a wider range of customers.
Further, if properly implemented, accessibility initiatives can give your business a better brand image. By boosting your workplace reputation, you also attract fresh and diverse talent.
An Accenture report found that companies that support accessibility benefit from a 28% greater annual revenue and a profit margin 30% higher than their peers.
2. Accessibility Compliance Avoids Legal Action
Ensuring your organization complies with accessibility requirements helps it avoid legal action and costly lawsuits. Lack of accessibility compliance can lead to legal claims resulting in fees, penalties, settlement costs, and costs incurred in redesigning systems to make them more accessible.
3. It Leads to a Better Customer Experience
Improving accessibility enables better customer engagement and increases the range of viewers and prospects, expanding the scope of your market.
In today’s digital world, an organization’s online presence plays a key role in its interaction with its target market and audience. Further, a user-friendly website can make all the difference. If your website is easy to navigate, it makes it more comfortable and less cumbersome for users to view, explore, spend time on, and even revisit it.
Also Read: How Hurix Digital Can Help You Improve Your Online Customer Experience
4. It Makes the Digital Arena More User-Friendly
Web accessibility testing tools can ensure your digital content, platform, and website are more accessible for web browsing and offer a better experience for users and customers. The Internet is an increasingly essential resource in multiple aspects of life and needs to be made accessible for people with disabilities. A study found that Americans with disabilities are three times more likely to say they do not use the Internet than those without a disability.
Accessibility testing aims to make products, services, and work environments more usable for people with disabilities. In this way, accessibility improves usability and the overall experience for customers.
For instance, accessibility standards like the WCAG require that you should be able to use and navigate a website completely using only a keyboard. This makes it easier for people who find it difficult to use a computer mouse.
If you meet this requirement, your website’s navigational aspects are organized well, and users can easily access the required content. This not only improves website accessibility for disabled users but also for your broader user base.
Other accessibility improvements also contribute to overall usability. For instance, providing alternative text for images can make it easier for people to understand the nature and purpose of the image content.
5. It Increases Your Market Reach
Apart from the importance of accessibility for disabled people, better accessibility also benefits your business by improving your market reach. People with disabilities comprise a significant portion of the population, and you lose out on a great deal of business by not accommodating them.
Although it may be difficult to have a website that is completely accessible to every individual, a few modifications can go a long way toward making it more usable. Including features like transcripts and closed captions, making the website more amenable for different devices, and a clear site design can benefit all users, including those with disabilities.
6. It Improves Your Brand Image
Many consumers prefer to support businesses that share their beliefs and values and take a stand on moral issues. Customers are often willing to walk away if they are disappointed with a company’s policy or behavior. For this reason, accessibility training can play an important role in equipping your employees to meet customer expectations and maintain your brand image.
Web accessibility is often important for people with disabilities, their near ones, and disability rights advocates. By helping your brand stand for accessibility, you help build a positive brand image. Further, people with disabilities who have a positive experience with your organization and general users who find it accessible are more likely to recommend it for its services or products.
Along with accessibility training and using a web accessibility tool, you can also have an accessibility statement on your website. It should state your company’s commitment toward accessibility and the measures it has taken towards improving accessibility, such as complying with WCAG guidelines.
Also Read: The Ultimate Guide to WCAG Compliance for the Website Developers
Summing Up
Comprehensive accessibility training and web accessibility testing can help your organization consistently meet accessibility guidelines and become a more inclusive place.
Accessibility benefits everyone, and there are several reasons why web accessibility is important. These include ensuring equal access, avoiding legal claims, improving usability and the customer experience, increasing market reach, and improving your brand image.
Hurix Digital offers workforce learning solutions and online training for businesses and organizations. Our design experts work with the best-in-class technology to ensure that our custom solutions are specific to your context and accessible. Our e-learning content caters to the diverse needs and goals of different organizations. Get in touch with us now!
Gokulnath B is the Associate Vice President – Editorial Services. He is PMP, CSM, and CPACC certified and has 20+ years of experience in Project Management, Delivery Management, and managing the Offshore Development Centre (ODC).