Know Why Section 508 Accessibility Compliance Matters For Business

 

What do you think ‘accessibility’ is? Gone are the days when it was limited to a simple handrail, wheelchair access, or parking space. It rather encompasses all the public-facing entities-that include your documents and websites as well. Through this blog, we try to decode what accessibility compliance means and why must businesses prioritize document and website remediation processes. Read on to know more:

You have invested countless hours and efforts to formulate a perfect setup and content for your business. You launch it, take pride in your work, and see it grow and prosper. Seeing the organization flourish and thrive like never before is truly a blissful sight.

In the meantime, a visually-challenged lady logs onto her computer using a system of key commands and a screen-reader. That lady is an experienced web surfer, just like us, she does the regular tasks a little differently.

Her computer tells the page she is currently on and helps in making an online purchase. She then goes to a search engine to look for the options in your business’s industry and clicks on your website link. She is all ready to become a new, satisfied customer; unfortunately, your website is not disabled-friendly. You’ve lost a prospect as the visually-challenged lady cannot interact with your website.

Instead of taking any action against your business, the visually impaired lady chooses to move to the next site that is section compatible with her AT. But not all businesses are fortunate enough!

Take another case in point, the COVID-19 pandemic brought the entire world to its knees. Though numerous businesses had shut down, others were on the radar of closing. Life, overall, had paused. But digital technology played a vital role in enabling and empowering everyone to resume the ‘new normal.

Working from a remote location and remaining productive was possible. Children could continue their education through digital channels and other platforms. Socializing and collaborating with friends got easier over the internet. The impacts of the deadly pandemic would be far more debilitating without the advantages of present-day digital technology.

However, not every one of us could resume the ‘new normal’ this easily. In other words, the almost overnight move to digital created further inequities and obstacles for people with special needs. For the visually impaired people, for example, browsing the web and accessing digital documents became extremely challenging, which the rest of us take for granted. This is where Section 508 accessibility comes into the picture.

Understanding Section 508 Accessibility Compliance

The pandemic clearly highlighted the importance of digital technology in connecting the world and making lives easier for everyone. As a result, businesses are challenged to find ways to improve digital access for the disabled.

So, section 508 accessibility ensures that electronic and information technology are equally reachable for everyone, including people with disabilities. This means that your websites, forms, PDFs, reports, and other range of digital documents must be compatible with assistive technologies. In other words, disabled-friendly also means transforming new as well as existing documents so they can be accessed easily using assistive software and/or hardware. A reliable 508 document remediation services provider can help you with this!

Though these laws and compliance are applicable to a few sectors, it would be wise enough for growth-focused businesses to begin working toward digital accessibility. The perks of improving and working on digital access today are worth it.

Perks of Section 508 Accessibility

Many businesses cannot figure out the benefits of making their websites and documents disabled friendly. Doing the right thing by providing access to everyone can boost your internal morale, brand value as well as customer loyalty significantly. It not only helps you uncover new business prospects, but also positions your company for early compliance as laws change. Other benefits are as follows:

• Market Opportunity

The disabled population forms a significant chunk of the overall population. As a business, you cannot afford to miss out on this market as people with disabilities comprise the world’s largest minority market, spending close to $2 trillion annually. (Source: Forrester report dated May 2022) Besides, reaching enhanced accessibility standards illustrates a firm’s commitment to catering to the diverse needs of a wide variety of audiences.

• Obligatory Legal Compliance

The likes of Nike, Beyonce, Dominos, and so on were sued for not being disabled-friendly. As a result, they had to pay huge dollars to fix their websites, meet the set industry standards, pay fines, and get off lawsuits, lawyer fees, etc. If you do not have rich reserves of dollars, you might end up with permanent business closure. But when you are legally compliant, you need not worry about such things and confidently market your products.

• Enhanced Customer Experience

During the process of document and website remediation, different tags and descriptions are added to help the assistive technologies with the reading order. These tags help you to increase your website’s ranking organically. They also make website crawling easier, thus enhancing the customer experience. In short, being accessibility compliant not only enhances customer experience, but also boosts SEO.

Final Words

From the above discussion, it is quite clear why businesses must be section 508 compliant. It not only boosts internal morale, increases brand value, and enhances customer outreach, but also saves you from legal complications. Ignoring these facts could only lead you to major problems in the form of the lawsuit!

So, how to get going? Damco Solutions, an IT services and solutions providing company can surely help out. We offer the best 508 document remediation services covering all the bases, including audits, remediation, and testing. The bonus part is that all this comes at cost-effective rates.

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