Common Accessibility Myths

WCAG is not a law, but a set of standards. And these standards are the basis of some laws:

• Federal websites are subject to following Section 508 of The Rehabilitation Act of 1973. And Section 508's criteria for accessibility comes straight from WCAG 2.0.
• Companies that operate in Canada or who do business there (i.e. some Maritz clients) are subject to a variety of Canadian accessibility laws, some of which are based on WCAG.
• The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines has also been cited in court cases related to The Americans With Disabilities Act. The ADA itself does NOT have any explicit or measurable criteria on how to determine if a site is or is not accessible. That said, the Department of Justice has cited WCAG in dozens of recent ADA cases about web accessibility. In each of these situations, the settlement of the case mentions that part of the settlement agreement is that the plaintiff would conform to WCAG within a certain time frame.

You most definitely can be sued for an inaccessible website. Here are some recent examples of companies sued for inaccessible websites:

• Hy-Vee, Inc.
• The Kroger Co.
• Meijer, Inc.
• Rite Aid Corporation

All of these cases were settled, and part of those settlements included an agreement that the plaintiff would work on conforming to WCAG.

Not to mention one of the landmark cases in accessibility, in which Domino's was sued and found at fault.

The number of accessibility cases in the last few years has grown, according to UsableNet:

• 2018: 2,314
• 2019: 2,890
• 2020: 3,503
• 2021: 4,011
• 2022: 4,035
• 2023: Estimate of 4,220 by year's end

As UsableNet states in its mid-year report for 2023: "Most companies that received lawsuits have annual revenue under 25 million. This trend reflects how plaintiff firms submit claims in large volumes. This trend is a natural progression after years of lawsuits. Many of the largest companies have already been sued and have accessibility programs, so plaintiffs are naturally progressing to focus on smaller companies. The increase in eCommerce sales due to changing consumer spending habits may also impact these numbers."

Many of our clients explicitly mention WCAG on their websites, either as an aspirational good or as part of their own accessibility statements and goals.

• AT&T Web Accessibility Statement
• AT&T Universal Design Statement
• Porsche Accessibility Statement
• Smartsheet Accessibility and 508 Compliance
• Sherwin-Williams Commitment to Accessibility
• Volvo Accessibility
• Nissan Accessibility Support

Here are some examples of accessibility statements from companies who work in events:

• Cvent Accessibility Statement
• Freeman Accessibility Policies
• Accessibility Features on Eventive

This statement falls apart quickly.

The four WCAG Principles are Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. The "Perceivable" section focuses on the numerous ways people perceive content. This section is where we learn that all non-text elements must have a text equivalent.

Specifically, 1.2 speaks to the requirements for time-based media:

• 1.2.1, Level A, Alternative content is provided for all prerecorded audio and video.
• 1.2.2, Level A, Captions are provided for all prerecorded video.
• 1.2.3, Level A, Audio descriptions or an alternative are provided for all prerecorded video.
• 1.2.4, Level AA, Captions are provided for live audio content.
• 1.2.5, Level AA, Audio descriptions are provided for all prerecorded video.
• 1.2.6, Level AAA, Sign language interpretation is provided for all prerecorded audio content.
• 1.2.7, Level AAA, Extended audio descriptions are provided for all prerecorded video.
• 1.2.8, Level AAA, A media alternative is provided for all prerecorded time-based media.
• 1.2.9, Level AAA, A media alternative is provided for all live audio.

Additionally, the other requirements for WCAG still apply. Imagine yellow text on a white background. That fails the WCAG color contrast requirements, as it is difficult to read. And it's difficult to read, regardless of whether it's on a web page or a video.

Microsoft has accessibility checkers that can check some (but not all) accessibility issues. The W3C's document PDF Techniques for WCAG 2.0 explains techniques that people can use to conform to WCAG when creating PDFs.

Just like HTML documents, other documents need to follow accessibility standards like proper heading hierarchy, color contrast, alt text, etc.

Copy is imperative to making content accessible! Plain language makes content easier to understand regardless of background, native language, familiarity with legal concepts, etc.

Also, link text is explicitly mentioned in a few WCAG Success Criteria. Link text must make sense independently of the text that comes before it or after it, as users will be able to hear links in a list or when they tab from link to link. If each link just says "click here," users will have no context of what they are clicking on or where that link will take them.

The same goes for headings. Users can get headings in a list, so those need to be straightforward and make sense.

Headings need to be actual headings, rather than text that has just been made bigger and bolder.

This is tempting. After all, the client is always right, right? But there are some risks with that:

• Legal risks
• Financial risks
• Damage to brand(s)
• Risk of having to make fixes later
• Our competitors could start indicating that they care about accessibility, and they start looking more appealing

Our clients might not explicitly ask for accessibility, but that doesn't mean it's not the smart move on our part legally, financially, and ethically. Also, if we are able to show we are making headway in this area, our clients and potential clients can see this as a positive.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is robust and flexible enough that each success criterion has multiple ways you can achieve that criterion. There are no success criteria where the look and aesthetics are explicitly dictated. You might dislike the way a designer or developer has styled a component or element, and if so, you have every right to work with the designer or developer to make it more aesthetically pleasing while still being able to be accessed on assistive technologies. The disagreements on aesthetics should never be a justification to take out the functionality that allows people to access the site.

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. In other words, WCAG is the accessibility standard, and WCAG is the best practice. WCAG is the basis for Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and is the basis of several accessibility laws across the world. WCAG is the standard cited in ADA lawsuits and settlements. We cannot say we keep current with accessibility standards and best practices if we aren't able to keep up with WCAG. Currently, we have some teams trying to make some in-roads on learning WCAG. We don't have any department that is completely current, but we have some earnest folks trying to move things along.

This is wrong. The World Health Organization statistics on disabilities states: "An estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. This represents 16% of the world's population, or 1 in 6 of us."

According to Pew Research data about disabilities in the United States, "Overall, there are about 42.5 million Americans with disabilities, making up 13% of the civilian noninstitutionalized population, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2021." And according to the CDC, 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. has a disability.

None of these are negligible numbers. And they should be viewed in context of other causes that Maritz has deemed important.

For example, all new Maritz employees are required to watch a video about human trafficking. The fact that Maritz mentions human trafficking on its site and that employees are required to watch a video signals that Maritz considers human trafficking an important cause. And that's good! It's noble and smart for a company to invest in this type of social action.

How many people are affected by human trafficking? According to the U.S. Department of State, "Traffickers profit at the expense of their victims by compelling them to perform labor or to engage in commercial sex in every region of the United States and around the world. With an estimated 27.6 million victims worldwide at any given time, human traffickers prey on people of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities, exploiting them for their own profit."

That's 27.6 million people believed to be trafficked at any given time, worldwide. That's 2.12% of the 1.3 billion people worldwide who have a disability. To be sure, both groups of people are important, and we should not be saying one is more important than the other. At the same time, we cannot say that accessibility affects a group of people too small to merit our attention if we are also willing to publicly put effort, time, and energy into helping a group of people that's a fraction of the size of the global disabled population.

Maritz values social causes:

• Maritz's website openly mentions the company's efforts to fight human trafficking
• Maritz employees are required to watch videos about human trafficking
• In October 2022, Maritz employees received an e-mail with the subject "Pronouns in Workday and Email Signatures," which gave employees instructions on how to include their pronouns in communications
• Before being deleted, Maritz Global Events' Twitter/X account posted about:
• Black History Month
• LGBTQ+ inclusion
• #InternationalWomensDay, #WomensHistoryMonth, and #GirlPower

On top of this, Maritz often talks about how the company values diversity, equity, and inclusion. Indeed, caring about social causes and the various communities in which Maritz operates seems to be an essential part of Maritz's corporate identity.

One of Maritz's hallmark causes is human trafficking. According to the U.S. Department of State, there are an estimated 27.6 million victims worldwide at any given time. That's 2.12% of the 1.3 billion people worldwide who have a disability. To be sure, both groups of people are important, and we should not be saying one is more important than the other. And under the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the numbers don't matter. And shouldn't matter. The DE&I initiative on allowing people to share their pronouns was not driven by how many people it does or does not affect.

This is easy to dispute.

First off, we have disabled people at Maritz who work in all parts of the process. So the idea that no disabled people look at the sites we create is wrong, as we have disabled people creating these sites.

Beyond that, we can't say that we know for sure that disabled people are not looking at the sites we create. An estimated 1.3 billion people in the world have a disability. This represents 16% of the world's population, or 1 in 6 people. And if you focus squarely on the United States, there are about 42.5 million Americans with disabilities. This is about 13% of the U.S. population.

That is not a small or dismissible group of people.

There are many things wrong with this, of course.

Deafness, blindness, and deaf-blindness exist on a spectrum. There are deaf people who have some percentage of hearing. There are blind people who have some percentage of sight. The idea that you must have zero percent of your sight to be blind is a harmful fallacy. Same goes for the idea that you must have zero percent of your hearing to be deaf.

Beyond that, though, the original statement erases and excludes so many other experiences and instances of disability:

• Limited dexterity (carpal tunnel, repetitive stress injury, etc.)
• Color-blindness
• ADHD
• Autism
• Aphasia (audio-processing disorders)
• Vestibular disorders

There are several disabilities and experiences that affect how people use the web. There are people with these disabilities who work at Maritz, and statistically, there will be all sorts of disabled people outisde of Maritz who will need to access these sites.

The problem is that there is no way for any plugin or widget that is able to make a site accessible.

To be sure, there are many services and products out there aimed at increasing accessibility and usability of websites. There are some great organizations who have training and services. Deque is one of the leading companies in this space.

There are also some services and products out there that are marketed as increasing accessibility, though they can't deliver. That kind of widget is also called an "overlay." On the surface, it looks neat and helpful, as it seems to offer some neat options. But among people with disabilities who use assistive technologies, the sentiment has been that these overlay widgets do not help. Instead, disabled users say that these widgets make things worse: they hijack your settings and make it more difficult and less accessible. Many of these overlays and widgets have been marketed as being able to be "ADA-compliant" and able to "prevent lawsuits." Thing is, the ADA does not have any measurable criteria with one can comply or not comply (despite accessibility specialists begging for standards of that sort). Some of the companies have been defensive of critics, going so far as to sue accessibility specialists who recommend against these products. For these reasons, many accessibility specialists have actively boycotted any organization or company that uses such a widget.

Here are some resources explaining these widgets further:

• Karl Groves' Overlay Fact Sheet
• Michael Spellacy's "Should I Use an Accessibility Overlay"
• Vice: People With Disabilities Say This AI Tool Is Making the Web Worse for Them
• NBC News: Blind people, advocates slam company claiming to make websites ADA compliant

To conform to AA of any version of WCAG, we have to meet all single-A and double-A standards. We don't have to conform to the triple-A standards, but we have to conform to every A and AA Success Criteria, whether we are aiming for WCAG 2.1 or WCAG 2.2. If we want to be able to tell clients that we can conform to WCAG, then we have to be able to conform to WCAG. In the beginning, we will certainly struggle, make mistakes, learn, and grow. That's to be expected. We don't have to immediately be able to meet all the success criteria right away. But we have to aim toward meeting it.