As a business, you want to hire the best candidates for the job. However, you also want to emphasize accessibility within your organization without compromising your search for the top talent.

Fortunately, these two different motivations don’t have to be in conflict. By looking for people with the six traits below, you might improve your odds of hiring outstanding employees who also are a good fit for the pro-accessibility mindset.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are organized by four main principles, which state that content must be POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. WCAG is the most-referenced set of standards in website accessibility lawsuits and is widely considered the best way to achieve accessibility.

Web accessibility is a hot topic and it's here to stay — but with so many organizations learning and implementing the guiding principles and best practices, who actually gets to decide whether or not a website is accessible?

It's no secret web accessibility lawsuits are on the rise and that industries from education to retail to hospitality are increasingly adding compliance measures to help their websites and apps stay compliant with laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

With so much focus on the compliance aspect of accessibility, here's a reminder that you're doing the right thing for your customers and your business while improving everyone's experience.

Labor Day 2019 marked the 125th as a national holiday, a day the US Department of Labor says "celebrates and honors the greatest worker in the world – the American worker." Let's be certain we include the contributions of the members of the workforce with disabilities in that celebration and continue to work to create a more inclusive and more accessible workplace that empowers the future achievements of all workers.

Most businesses rely on third-parties for at least some of their website needs — the website may have been designed by a vendor, it may live on a vendor's platform or use their components and templates, or the content could even be managed entirely or partially by a vendor on an ongoing basis.

Here are 7 questions to ask your vendors about accessibility.

For people who need or want to navigate the web with high contrast enabled, these settings offer a free and pretty reliable way to do so. High contrast also gives you a fast and easy way to identify some accessibility issues on your website you might not catch otherwise.

Automated accessibility testing tools, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and code-scanning technology, can be an important part of an accessibility testing plan — but, they must remain just a part. Automated testing on its own should not replace manual testing by an accessibility expert and should not be used as the only way to show compliance.

It's that time of year and millions of students and their families across the country are getting ready for the new school year to begin. Back-to-school shopping, summer homework, and last-minute preparations can be difficult and stressful enough — and even more so when the websites and tools needed to do these things are not built to be accessible to people with disabilities.

Here are five accessibility reminders for back-to-school.

Accessibility may be the furthest thing from your mind when you’re just trying to get your startup off the ground, but it’s actually a crucial piece of the puzzle. Not only can accessibility save you a great deal of time and legal fees, it can also win your business more customers — which is essential when you’re in the growth phase of your startup. Read more…

Did you know that how well websites work on a smartphone or tablet is a critical piece of web accessibility? While it's true that in-depth testing probably requires partnership with accessibility experts, you can start a preliminary assessment of your website's accessibility on your phone right now, for free.

According to projections by market research company Coherent Market Insights, the global assistive technology market will reach $26 billion by 2024, nearly doubling from $14 billion in 2015. Zion Market Research is even more optimistic about the industry’s trajectory, with an estimate of $31 billion in 2024 and an annual growth rate of 7.4 percent.

On July 30, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, joined by six other senators, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Barr asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) to clarify how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to web sites. 

In order to be successfully adopted across the organization, accessibility can’t be limited to the lower rungs of the business — it needs to be supported by executives in the C-suite as well.

Here 8 of the most important things that executives need to know about accessibility.

Some businesses may wonder if their pockets are deep enough or there is enough value in making their sites and apps accessible, and genuinely have the question, "What if I can't afford accessibility?" Read more…

Tables are a great way to organize and share a lot of data and information. They help content creators and designers present facts and figures cleanly, when describing them in words and sentences may be difficult and tiresome.

While there are many other factors for whether a table can be considered accessible, one of the most common accessibility issues with data tables is the lack of properly-coded headers.

There are a lot of website accessibility testing strategies, but if custom use cases aren't part of your testing strategy, you may be exposed to accessibility vulnerabilities as a result.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of owning a car is the independence that it provides: drivers can commute to work, run errands, visit friends and family, and much more. However, in recent years, many people are choosing to rely more heavily on ridesharing services, such as Uber and Lyft, instead of owning and maintaining their own vehicles.

The convenience of requesting and paying for transportation only when you need it is appealing to millions. And for some people with disabilities who don't obtain a driver's licence or don't have access to their own vehicle, these services have introduced a new potential era of transportation independence.

Of course, this can only be achieved if the apps and vehicles themselves are accessible. Although not perfect, Uber and Lyft have both made strong commitments to accessibility for people with disabilities.

Implementing accessibility best practices on your website allows people with disabilities to consume your content and engage with you to the fullest extent. Many businesses are also realizing the many additional benefits of web accessibility.

Digital marketers, for example, are discovering that accessibility improves SEO. There's a related aspect that hasn't received much attention: accessibility improves bounce rates.

On the Fourth of July, we celebrate our independence as a nation that collectively values freedom and liberty. It also feels like an appropriate time to celebrate and reflect on what independence means for the individual and how prioritizing accessibility can enable some individuals with disabilities to live more independently in the digital age.

Deafness, hearing loss, and being hard of hearing are some of the most common disabilities in the U.S. and worldwide, yet there are still many misconceptions surrounding hearing disabilities — including that there are many different levels of hearing. Here are 8 facts about hearing impairment and how they relate to web accessibility.

Advocates for digital accessibility and those in compliance and governance roles sometimes say that accessibility should be prioritized at the same level as privacy and security. Absolutely, it should be, but it's time to take the argument one step further — not only should accessibility be prioritized in the same way as privacy and security, it needs to be recognized that accessibility is privacy and security.

Microsoft has released four new computer games that people can play using only their eyes. These games, branded Eyes First, use eye-tracking technology to enable people with speech and mobility disabilities to do things on the computer like solve puzzles and negotiate mazes.

This article will not contain any accessibility best practices. It will not tell you any quick fixes you can make to your websites and apps to make them more usable for people with disabilities. It will not be technical at all. But yet, it will tell you the single most important thing you can do to improve web accessibility.

PowerPoint is many people's go-to program for creating presentations. It also tends to be highly visual with graphs, images, and infographics. Fortunately, just like Microsoft Word, PowerPoint has many built-in features to help make documents accessible — but this doesn't mean your presentations are automatically accessible.