Improve the Accessibility of Your Website

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While we do our best to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) when designing all our new websites, many basic web functions and design elements do pose challenges in completely adhering to the proposed standards. To fully comply with WCAG we are recommending all clients add the free UserWay Accessibility Widget to their websites (click the icon in the bottom right of this page for an example). This widget adds advanced website accessibility solutions without refactoring your website's existing code and ensures a comprehensive legal & regulatory compliance framework covering ADA, Section 508, WCAG 2.1 AA, and much more.

Failure to comply with Section 508 of the Department of Justice's Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design could expose you or your company to hefty fines, the risk of expensive criminal and civil litigation as well as a reputation for being unfriendly to people with disabilities.

Inclusive Experiences for Absolutely Everyone

Visually Impaired

UserWay assists users that have varying degrees of visual impairment by enhancing their browsing experience to best meet their needs and physical limitations.

UserWay does this by improving your site's support for keyboard-only navigation, as well as enabling users to independently increase the contrast of contents on your site, increasing the font size, switching to a more readable font face, using a larger cursor, highlighting links, desaturating content (removing color from text and images), and more, based on their personal disability and preference.

Elderly

With the UserWay accessibility plugin you can help elderly users overcome any senses that may have softened or deteriorated over time by allowing them to adjust the text size on your site, by highlighting clickable areas so they don't get lost among the other content, by increasing the size of the mouse pointer and by using higher contrast colors.

Blind

With UserWay, blind and visually impaired people on your site can finally become more independent and better integrate with the online world, which they so intimately depend on for their daily lives. Accessibility guidelines empower disabled users to more effortlessly deal with everyday tasks while helping make their handicap a little less of an obstacle.

UserWay helps visually impaired and blind users have a more meaningful browsing experience on your website and thus a stronger connection with you and your business. While you'll be more closely adhering to website accessibility standards as required by law, you may also enjoy increased ROI from providing a better experience to a broader user base.

Mobility Impaired

Try abandoning your mouse for a couple of days and see what the experience is like navigating your company's site.

UserWay creates a simpler and more accessible browsing experience for users with mobility issues as well. Millions of people cannot use a mouse or other pointing device and rely solely on their keyboard to navigate websites. Your site should be fully navigable using a keyboard's tab key, arrow keys, the enter key and the spacebar.

The UserWay widget will make smart modifications to elements on your site that we identify as potentially non-compliant or that may prevent keyboard-only navigation.

Situational Disabilities

Have you ever had your pupils dilated for an eye exam, only to leave the doctors office and find the world painfully bright and blurry? Or maybe you've found yourself unable to type on the computer because you sprained your wrist?

These scenarios might just seem like temporary frustrations, but there’s actually a name for them - situational disabilities. Disabilities do not always have to be permanent or ongoing. Sometimes your environment or circumstances can create a temporary disability or impairment.

UserWay helps to make technology more accessible for everyone, no matter what their situation is or how long they anticipate it to continue. If you're temporarily impaired, having easy-to-use modifications will give you more freedom and flexibility to adapt digital content to your needs.

Widget Options

The basic widget as implemented on our site (with the UserWay branding and links) is completely free to use on any website. For the vast majority of websites we find this to be the perfect solution.

The are also additional options available for subscription prices starting at $10/mo. These include a ‘White Label’ version of the widget (no UserWay logo or links); Custom Branding (add your logo to the widget); Usage Statistics (insights into which accessibility features are your visitors use most); and the ability to modify the various accessibility features on the main accessibility menu. Probably not a necessity for most sites unless you have a specific requirement.

Installation

If you’d like to add this functionality to your website let us know and we can add it for you. We are offering a discounted one-time cost of $25 to perform the following functions:

• We will create your UserWay account, configure the widget and generate the code to be embedded on your website.
• Add the code to the website and check for and resolve any JavaScript errors or conflicts that may cause the widget or other existing functions on the site to not function properly.
• Add an Accessibility Statement page to your website and add links to the page where appropriate.

Of course, you’re also free to add the widget yourself if you’d prefer. In any case, we do strongly recommend you do what you can to maximize the accessibility of your site and services.

Please contact us with any questions or to have us add this functionality to your website.