Society is comprised of people from diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, gender identities, sexualities, races, religions, and physical and mental capabilities. As part of a diverse society, businesses should ideally be accessible to as many people as possible, including those who are living with physical or mental disabilities.

According to a report produced by the World Health Organization (WHO), around 1.3 billion people, accounting for 16% of the world population, are living with significant disabilities. This makes it extremely pertinent that businesses adopt systems and facilities that are accessible to a majority of the population.

Besides being the most inclusive and ethical choice, accessibility in business can also benefit your organization in multiple ways.

Table of Contents:

What is Business Accessibility?

Business accessibility refers to the ease with which the organization’s products, services, and facilities can be used by the company’s employees and customers. A high degree of business accessibility is desired to be able to reach as many people as possible and ensure meaningful interaction with them.

In business accessibility, special attention is given to people with physical and mental disabilities.

Digital accessibility is a part of business accessibility, and it deals with the design of technological products and services so that people with various disabilities can partake in the use of the products and services.

Many people with disabilities rely on digital products and services for online shopping, working from home, banking, healthcare, etc. However, due to inadequate design, many online products and services are not accessible to people with disabilities.

This is why digital accessibility is extremely important in the modern age.

Why are Accessibility Solutions Important?

Measuring accessibility helps you ensure that your accessibility solutions are serving their purpose. Accessibility is important, not just because it is legal compliance. It also offers multiple benefits for your business, website, and customers.

1. It Promotes Equal Access

Accessibility solutions ensure equal access in your organization. This makes it more inclusive for people with disabilities, both employees and clients.

It also improves the scope and the reach of your organization: by welcoming employees and clients with disabilities, it stands to benefit from a larger pool of talent as well as a larger range of customers.

Successful accessibility solutions can improve your brand image. By making your organization more accessible, you convey to customers and prospects that your company values an inclusive culture. You also enable your business to attract new and diverse talent.

2. It Avoids Legal Claims

Successful accessibility solutions enable your business to keep up with accessibility compliance that is legally required. This helps avoid legal claims and expensive lawsuits.

Legal claims can result in fees and penalties ,as well as costs incurred in settlements and redesigning systems in your organization.

3. It Improves the Customer Experience

By making your business and company website more accessible, you provide a better experience for users and customers. A study found that 71% of website visitors with disabilities will leave a website if they find that it is not accessible.

Better accessibility allows for more customer engagement and a wider range of viewers and prospects, widening the scope of your market. The more accessible your website and organization are, the more viewers and potential customers you can reach.

In the world of digital marketing, where your online presence is increasingly important, a user-friendly website can make all the difference.

How Accessibility Helps Your Business?

Business accessibility is a basic requirement and the right thing to do. But why is accessibility important for businesses? It benefits the business in numerous ways.

1. Legal Compliance

Many countries have laws governing physical and digital accessibility. Businesses that are not accessibility-compliant may face serious repercussions. Every business should strive for at least a basic level of compliance to avoid potential legal action.

2. Wider Audience Reach

Since 1 in 6 people worldwide experiences some kind of serious disability, the more digitally accessible a business is, the wider the audience it will be able to reach. Businesses that reach a larger customer base are more likely to enjoy higher sales figures and greater profitability.

3. Improved User Experience

Business accessibility not only makes it possible for people with disabilities to use a company’s products and services, but it also improves the overall user experience for all its customers. Digital accessibility means ease of use, text clarity, and better navigation, practices that benefit users of all abilities. Companies that don’t make their websites and apps accessible run the risk of automatically excluding a considerable portion of potential users by preventing them from building meaningful relationships with them.

4. Brand Image

An accessible business is likely to be viewed more favorably by customers. Just as bad accessibility can ruin a brand’s reputation, good accessibility practices can help build your brand image. Companies that make an effort to be more accessible so that they can serve all of their customers more efficiently will gain more goodwill in the marketplace. Better accessibility in business will make your company stand out.

5. Improved SEO

Search engines like Google are dedicated to providing the best search results to their users. Search engine crawlers take into account the user experience of your website and rank it accordingly.

Accessibility is paramount to providing a great user experience, and companies that have a higher degree of accessibility are more likely to be ranked higher. It will boost your SEO efforts, which in turn will improve your ranking.

Significance of an Accessibility Culture in Your Organization

Encouraging an accessible culture is crucial for establishing inclusiveness, diversity, and equality among all workers and stakeholders. Fostering a more inclusive workplace is not only an act of social responsibility, but it also makes business sense from both a social and financial point of view.

Businesses that adopt accessibility best practices gain several benefits, including improved efficiency, innovation, imagination, and talent retention. Furthermore, they gain from enhancing the credibility and image of their brand, along with creating a positive work environment.

A diverse workforce also more accurately represents the society in which we live. Businesses can be able to comprehend the demands of the market and target demographics on a larger and more thorough level in this way.

Apart from the many positive corporate benefits, organizations must never lose sight of the primary goal of accessibility requirements, which is to value diversity and encourage greater equity and social inclusion in the labor market.

How to Make Your Business Accessible?

Now that you know how important accessibility is for growing your business and improving profitability, let us understand how you can make your business accessible:

1. Make Accessibility a Part of Your Digital Strategy

It is a lot easier to implement accessibility while still planning your website content, so start by making accessibility a part of your digital strategy.

Figure out who your primary users are and what they require before determining the baseline for your website. Consider elements like colors, contrasts, alt text on images, font styles, use of interactive elements, etc., while planning and developing your website.

2. Review Your Existing Websites

Review your existing websites periodically to ensure that they continue to meet the accessibility standards in your country. You can use Artificial Intelligence (AI) accessibility tools to uncover missing accessibility features and fix them.

Tools that actively monitor new accessibility issues are available for use.

3. Take Into Account Visual Disabilities

Various types of images and the colors used have an impact on how people with visual disabilities can access them. These factors also influence the alt text added to the images to make them accessible.

Providing appropriate alt text alternatives with the images is necessary to ensure ease of accessibility by those with visual impairments.

4. Consider Hearing Impairments

To make your audio content accessible to those with hearing impairments, you can include different types of video transcripts. Transcripts are written text recordings of audio that help people with hearing impairments understand the audio content.

Transcripts can be used for both audio-only and audio-with-visual media content.

5. Ensuring Accessibility Involves Teamwork

For a business to be truly accessible, everyone involved needs to be actively engaged in the endeavor. Discuss accessibility with others in the company, ranging from the CEO to junior management members. Everyone has to be on board to start working on making the business accessible to as many people as possible, and this goal can be achieved by investing in an effective training management system.

AI-Powered Accessibility Tools: What are They?

Accessibility technology spans a wide range of solutions that all aim to make the workplace more inclusive and accessible to people with varied needs. As such, there exist multiple types of AI-powered inclusive technologies that elevate the workplace experience for everyone.

Some of the most widely used AI-powered accessibility tools in the workplace are:

  1. Speech Recognition Software: For people with mobility impairments, speech recognition helps with computer control, accessing digital content, entering text, reading, and more. It helps team members communicate easily and safely.
  2. Cognitive Accessibility Solutions: These tools help people with special abilities access information and services housed on company portals. They are particularly helpful for enhancing accessibility in workplaces that encourage the employment of people.
  3. Text-to-Speech Applications: These tools are a boon for people with visual impairment or reading difficulties who want to access and understand digital content. They help them “read” webpages, screen text, or other documents on a screen.
  4. Language Captions and Translations: A workplace may comprise people from across the world who are comfortable using different languages. Using translation tools helps them access company content better.
  5. Image Recognition: This technology is a gift for people with visual impairments. It enables them to understand visual content by way of AI-generated descriptions that help them visualize a picture.
  6. Lip Reading: Lip-reading technology is helpful for aurally challenged people. It generates text based on the speaker’s lip movements, helping them understand spoken content.
  7. User Navigation: User navigation technologies are an excellent way to help mobility-impaired employees use digital technologies or other appliances around the workplace. They work on speech recognition, gesture control, and other mechanisms to help mobility-impaired people (like seniors) access workplace services easily.

5 Benefits of AI-Powered Accessibility for Teams

AI-backed accessibility solutions collect a steady stream of data from their users. This data can be used to polish the accessibility systems implemented at the office and enhance workplace inclusivity for employees.

As accountability for digital accessibility grows, more organizations must ensure equitable access for all their employees.

Let’s take a look at five key ways in which AI-powered accessibility tools benefit teams at the workplace:

1. AI-Powered Search

One key accessibility advantage that AI tools bring to a workplace is AI-powered search. Company databases are often accessible to employees over the intranet. However, it is a whole new task to search for the desired resources quickly through a large repository.

In such situations, AI-powered search can help people with cognitive challenges to access the right resources in the repository without much hassle for keyword inputs. The AI engines are programmed to quickly process user requirements using NLP and other technologies and return the right results in the first few tries.

2. Speech-Directed Tasking

Organizations leverage speech-based commands to help their employees shorten their tasking time. This technology can enhance workplace accessibility for people who face challenges while typing or using gadgets. Speech-directed tasking can help them accomplish tasks without having to fidget with keys or controls.

It is also helpful for visually impaired individuals who work with images or digital content. They can use speech-based prompts to initiate processes on systems or help understand the content on the screen.

While this is similar to working with virtual assistants, AI algorithms used in speech-based tasking are more advanced and finetuned with company workflows and processes.

3. AI-Backed Training

Learning and development are inherent parts of any organization. However, for all individuals to learn and grow equitably, learning, development, and training need to be accessible to people with all kinds of capabilities.

AI-powered training provides individuals with special needs with the tools they need to keep pace with their peers easily. This includes technologies like adaptive learning, personalized learning recommendations, assisted learning, and reviews.

The availability of learning tools that help employees personalize their Training Programs is a big leap toward making them more engaging, accessible, and inclusive for people from all walks of life.

4. Virtual Assistants

Virtual assistants are accessibility tools oriented towards a more personal tasking purpose. These tools enhance accessibility in the workplace by providing employees with an adaptive interface that learns and evolves with each interaction. AI virtual assistants are programmed to evolve according to each user’s habits and usage patterns, delivering personalized interactions that are fine-tuned to the user’s behavior.

This includes understanding the busiest times, the usual searches and patterns, creating easy shortcuts based on usage, etc. These tools make it easier for employees to accomplish simple, everyday desk tasks at work with high speed and efficiency, regardless of whether they can type fast or slow or their computer skills.

5. Task Management

Accessibility is an important aspect of task management and employee efficiency. Higher task management efficiencies enhance workplace productivity and performance. However, people with impairments or challenges (mobility, visual, speech, etc.) may struggle to achieve everyday, simple tasks like setting reminders or scheduling a meeting.

AI-powered productivity apps make such features more accessible to people with special needs. They assist with automated meeting scheduling, auto-reminders, and notifications, helping them navigate the workplace with the same ease as any other employee.

Read EXCLUSIVE Success Story: Hurix Digital Enhances Accessibility for Over 100,000 Students for a US-Based Community College

How to Measure the Success of Accessibility Solutions?

The best way to ensure that your accessibility solutions are working is to find effective ways to measure their success and how to measure accessibility. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide helpful guidelines that can serve as a checklist for your website accessibility.

In addition to following and cross-checking these guidelines, there are other ways to measure the success of your solutions and initiatives. Here are some practical tips that will help you measure the success of your accessibility solutions.

1. Determine Accessibility Metrics

Accessibility metrics enable you to break down the overall goal of accessibility into smaller, measurable milestones. Make sure to cover all the WCAG criteria when determining your accessibility metrics. These metrics should be actionable, and the responsibility for them should be vested in a particular team.

For instance, different metrics may apply to the web development team, the IT management team, the management team, etc. You may even have an accessibility team if you have a larger business. Each group will have different metrics to consider based on different key performance indicators.

An example of an accessibility metric for a website is color contrast. Another example of an accessibility metric for an organization is the completion rate for accessibility training. How many employees have completed their accessibility training?

2. Categories Accessibility Metrics

Categorizing accessibility metrics helps you identify the different types of accessibility criteria and enables your team to easily assess and evaluate accessibility based on these metrics.

For instance, ARIA, color contrast, multimedia transcripts, text accessibility, and similar design elements can form one category that your web-development team can assess for a web accessibility solution.

3. Monitor Accessibility Solutions

One of the best ways to assess the success of accessibility solutions is to monitor the measures set in place. Continuously monitoring the measures allows you to track the accessibility solutions.

An effective way to monitor success is through direct feedback from employees or customers. Online surveys could allow them to convey their feedback and rate the accessibility of various aspects of your business.

4. Hire Professionals

Considering the importance of accessibility testing, it’s worth hiring professionals to evaluate the accessibility of your organization.

Accessibility professionals, professional web developers, and accessibility companies can inspect various aspects of your business, such as the physical infrastructure, employee programs, customer services, websites, and software.

Consultants can conduct WCAG testing and website accessibility testing to assess how ADA-compliant your business is.

They can suggest specific areas where you can improve the accessibility for employees and customers with different abilities. They can also ensure that your business complies with the guidelines, which are regularly updated.

5. Adopt a Maturity Model

Implementing accessibility solutions to comply with guidelines does not necessarily mean that your business is fully accessible and legally compliant. To ensure accessibility, you can adopt a maturity model to help measure the success of your accessibility efforts.

Maturity models allow you to support the adoption of conduct and practices that influence your organization’s culture. These practices focus on continuous improvement, which enables your organization to regularly update its policies and practices to adjust to employee and customer needs.

These practices will also encourage employees and help improve their work experience, leading to better retention rates and work performance. Additionally, they can help improve customer satisfaction and reduce customer churn rates.

How Can Hurix Help You with Business Accessibility?

As a business owner aiming to enhance accessibility, recognizing the importance of accessibility is paramount. When seeking to expand accessibility within your business, it’s crucial to address various aspects. Collaborating with an industry expert can yield significant advantages as they assess your current accessibility status and identify areas for improvement, ensuring comprehensive implementation strategies.

For over two decades, Hurix Digital has been actively engaged in making business spaces more inclusive and accessible.

Contact our experts at Hurix Digital to understand your accessibility needs better and implement a reliable, accessibility-compliant system to serve your customers more effectively.