Start the Remediation Process NOW!
We can solve this major risk starting immediately.
Easy, Affordable, Quick, and Simple.
However, Once You’ve Got a Lawsuit Letter, It’s a Different Story!
Here’s a simple way to run a quick assessment of the risk and likelihood of being sued.
Step 1: Launch the desktop Chrome browser and search for the WAVE Evaluation Tool.
Step 2: Install WAVE extension (it is provided by the Web Accessibility In Mind Organization).
Step 3: Go to any page on your website and click on the WAVE extension button.
Results:
You will see a popup on your left area of the screen, looking similar to the picture below. If you have zero errors, congrats! That means your website is probably compliant.
But If you have some errors, this is a strong indication that your website might NOT be compliant and YOU CAN BE AT RISK! The more errors you have, well .. you can judge by yourself!
Here’s an example of a webpage before and after the remediation. The front-end information is virtually the same, as in this case the UX/UI remains unaltered. The internal coding was modified, so the navigation becomes accessible to disabled people.
In a nutshell: your website MUST be accessible according to the WCAG 2.0 specifications at the AA level, to those with disabilities, so they can enjoy “full and equal” use of your website. Basically, anything that can be heard or seen (video, audio files) must have a written transcript. Pictures must have “alt” fields duly filled. Also, for visually impaired visitors, the screen reader software shall read without hiccups on your website. The website should be easily navigated without a mouse, only by using the keyboard.
Unfortunately, compliance is a process that cannot be fully automated and it is not easy to fix. Cheap solutions (like overlays or plugins that you can find for a couple of hundreds of dollars) cannot solve the accessibility issue. They are basically worthless because they mask non-compliance (but not for a lawyer)! You need to intervene MANUALLY and actually modify the code of the website, so it becomes TRULY accessible. Lawyers started to sue companies using those non-legit services because they can easily prove the lack of any intent of real compliance. By using this type of solutions your website is NOT suddenly becoming equally accessible to people with disabilities. It is just another proof that you tried to work around the system, and not genuinely solve the issue.
The ADA is a strict liability law which means there are no excuses/defenses for violations (e.g. play ignorance or show that the consultant is working on it and so on). The Department of Justice has backed ADA website lawsuits, so the only way to protect yourself against litigation is by actually making your website accessible, so there will be no ground for a lawsuit (including a frivolous one) There is a 200% expected yearly increase in the number of ADA website lawsuits. As you are reading this text, the plaintiff’s lawyers continue to file lawsuits as fast as they can! If you get your letter tomorrow, does it matter if you heard or not about ADA before?
Well, let’s put it in this way – can you find yourself at the same time 50% in a plane and 50% in your office? Same here. Your website either IT IS compliant or IT IS NOT compliant. To be compliant, ALL the accessibility issues must be clearly identified and addressed. This is not about being smart and finding a way to get around the law. It is about solving your website issues from a technical point of view, following an accepted reference – the framework provided by WCAG 2.0 (or 2.1) at least on an AA level. And you don’t need 15 employees to fall under the ADA in this respect – you just need a website!
Under ADA plaintiffs who bring lawsuits are generally not allowed to receive monetary awards. However, the lawyers are entitled to legal fees and expenses. For those among us with disabilities, it is usually not about the money – it is about the fact they want to become consumers of your content and customers for your services and products. The intention is to buy, but they cannot do it, because your website does not allow them equal access. For lawyers this area is a “low hanging fruit” – they can collect from you tens of thousands of dollars, just by filing a lawsuit and doing minimal work.
Well, in such a case, please do NOT contact us – it is too late to intervene. We are not lawyers, we are not licensed in the law area, hence we do not provide any kind of legal services. Contact your legal counsel and take the matter to him. If we start working on your website after you receive the letter and we do the remediation services, this process can be perceived as destruction of evidence. Since the lawsuit is usually based on the info on your public website, you don’t want this added to the case against your company. We would refrain ourselves to modify anything until it is crystal clear the alteration process got the OK from the legal
Our services are technical, IT-related website services, based on the generally accepted interpretation of the technical standard WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). We will perform an initial front-end audit to identify exactly what has to be done in remediation and we will provide a detailed quote. Based on this, you can decide to solve the issue in-house, ask your web designer to step in or allow us to do it for you. We don’t do general web development services – our company is specialized only in making client websites fully accessible, by meeting the WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 standard on a AA compliance level, mitigate future risk, and drastically reduce any chance for them to be sued. If you want to do it on your own, or entrust your web design company with that, it is absolutely your choice (and your legal responsibility).
Unfortunately, neither the audit nor the remediation actions cannot be done in an automated way. For processing your website code, one of our experts will manually test (by using the appropriate piece of software) each page and asset, then review and check the results against the standards. Here’s a quote from the w3.org (the entity that issued the WCAG standards): “We cannot check all accessibility aspects automatically. Human judgment is required. Sometimes evaluation tools can produce false or misleading results. Web accessibility evaluation tools can not determine accessibility, they can only assist in doing so.“
We believe both our audits and remediation services are the most affordable ones on the whole web ADA compliance industry.
We make use of a couple of overseas teams (full-stack programmers, accessibility experts, UI/UX designers) that helped us reduce the overall costs.
For speed and convenience, our Standard Audit experts will analyze a five-pages sample on your website (your home-page plus four other important ones). This includes all video and audio assets on these five pages. The purpose is for you to have a clear picture of the scale of the needed intervention.
We are offering as well, an optional upgrade to a Full-Scale Audit which will process all the pages and all video and audio assets of your website. This is priced roughly at $147 + $47 per each page analyzed (and takes 7 to 14 days to complete).
based on a statistical sample of pages from your website
For an audit now, please contact us.
(delivery inside 3-5 business days).
For your convenience, we will provide three examples, so you can understand where your business can expect, price-wise:
Client A
Ordered and received a standard audit for 10 pages ($379)
Website with 8 pages, 1 video and 2 pdf files; 11 assets and an estimate of 28 hrs of work
Quoted price – $47/hour multiplied by 28 hours minus the cost of the audit (credited) = $937 for remediation inside a week. Estimated savings of $35,000 for the initial 178 errors on all pages
Client B
Ordered a comprehensive audit for its 17 pages website ($946)
Website with 17 pages, 10 videos (under 5 min each), 6 mp3 files (under 5 min each), 10 pdf files (under 6 pages each) and one 35 min video; about 50 assets and an estimate of 83 hours of work
Quoted price – $47/hour multiplied by 83 minus the cost of the audit (credited) = $2,955 for remediation inside 15 days. Estimated savings $65,000 for the initial 477 errors on all pages
Client C
Ordered a comprehensive audit for website with 82 pages ($3,954)
About 150 assets (82 pages, 18 pdf files – one 25 pages, rest under 10 pages, 18 videos, 2 click funnels)- at this level he got a quote for 210 hours of work
Quoted price – $47/hour X 210 hours – audit = $5,916 inside 45 days (in 48 hours solved main issues on the homepage, and rest of the issues gradually)
Due to the lack of transcripts available, a bad accent of the speaker, and virtually no possibility to automatically generate closed captions and transcripts, there was a need for manual processing of the videos (9 hours) – the client agrees to pay an amount of $1,250 extra for the processing. Estimated savings of up to $140,000 for the initial 4,832 errors on all pages (76 of them on the website homepage)
90% of our customers incur a total cost under $4,900 for their website ADA compliance process. A median cost would be around $3,900 (excluding the audit) with variations from $2,000 to $9,000.
If you compare this amount with an average settlement + cost of urgent remediation + fine (near $100,000) you can easily see savings of $90k-$95k. The peace of mind that you are compliant has an important added bonus: by becoming accessible you will raise your chances to access the disability person market (1 in 5 inside the US has a visual, hearing or physical disability). By making easier for them to access your products, guess what – you will have more customers!
Here’s attached a screenshot of the form 8826 that one can found on the IRS website, with an important piece of information: eligible businesses (making under 1M and having under 30 employees) can benefit of a tax credit (max $5,000) for the “amounts paid or incurred by the eligible small business to comply with applicable requirements under the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-336)”. A tax credit is a type of tax incentive that can reduce the amount of money a taxpayer owes the government. Unlike a tax deduction, which reduces taxable income, a taxpayer can subtract a tax credit from the amount of taxes they owe, lowering their tax liability dollar-for-dollar.
But, by all means, do not take anything here as a specific advice (as we are no accountants or tax specialists) and always check your specific information and eligibility with your CPA, but we think is an avenue worth exploring.