Kris Rivenburgh presents on why it's so difficult to sort through the available products and services for website accessibility (presumably to help with ADA compliance and preventing litigation).  Researching the market is a difficult task in and of itself for many reasons.  One reason is because different sellers are selling different things.  

Here is a list of some of the more visible sellers that offer products and services in the website accessibility space:  

AccessiBe

There are literally dozens of other organizations that offer website accessibility products and services.  

To help understand what each seller is offering, it's best to bucket the different sellers into 5 categories:  

1. automated "solutions": work under the premise of you can make your website accessible/compliant and prevent litigation through an accessibility widget, commonly referred to as an overlay. They don't edit your code or remediate your content and they don't make your website WCAG conformant and they haven't prevented lawsuits.  

2. automated scans & reporting: center around the ability to scan a website and produce reports of the results and progress made. Maintenance and monitoring with alerts are a part of the product but manual service work is avoided.  

3. mid-tier agency audits: primarily offer a manual accessibility audit and consultation. Limited in capacity as they are typically small businesses.  

4. user testing services: offer actual user testing from professionals with disabilities along with support. Usually small business/agency types or non-profits.  

5. enterprise level packages: large company with at least 15 employees and a sales team. Primarily deal with larger organizations (e.g., government agencies, well known corporations). They feature a manual audit along with a suite of additional products and services including training and support.  

Review sites also contribute to the confusion.  Review sites include:  

AccessibilityChecker.org

Almost all of the review sites that rank in Google distort reality with favorable write-ups on overlay widgets alongside more tepid write-ups of genuine accessibility service providers.  

#WebsiteAccessibilityServices #WebsiteAccessibility #ADAWebsiteComplianceServices 

Transcript