This week on Chill, we chat with Michele Landis @ Accessible360. The co-founder of A360, Michele is an industry authority on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), WCAG, and myriad other digital compliance initiatives.

Overdose’s Andrew Potkewitz and Michele discuss ADA, WCAG, threat letters, legal action, and how to make websites compliant.

About Accessible360

If you are a business owner in the U.S., you need to adhere to a law that specifies businesses cannot discriminate against customers on the basis of a disability. For a brick and mortar store, this means physical measures like door and aisle minimum widths, signage readability, counter and basin heights, and other such things that enable access to your store for people with disabilities. 

The same principle applies to a website or other digital property. In digital terms, accessibility may be ‘alt text’ for images, or screen readers, or alternative options for online forms. 

Many people are unaware of what is required, and often, it’s not until they are faced with a lawsuit that they are spurred into action. 

Whether a business’s response is reactive or proactive, there are companies which specialise in assisting with the process of making sure your digital property is suitably accessible and legally compliant; Accessible360 is one of these.

Accessible360 background

Michele Landis and her co-founders started Accessible360 (A360, for short) with a resolute vision: a digital world that is accessible to all. Their mission is equally steadfast: create and maintain digital environments which offer equal access. 

Their passion for inclusivity and accessibility comes from the core: co-founder Aaron Cannon was born blind and became a software engineer. As a full-stack web developer working at an agency, Aaron could code in a ton of different languages. 

A360 has a team of auditors—some are blind, some are sighted—all with a technical background. Michele explains what they do is reconcile the experience of a physically-able user with that of a user with a disability. They follow an auditing process and cover four disabilities: visual, physical, cognitive, and auditory.

They work across many organisations and industries including ecommerce, education, financial, healthcare, government, law firms, and real estate.