Episode 7 – Accessibility on the Internet with a Special Guest from Accessibe

Leon (00:00):

Welcome to the next episode of The Boost. My name’s Leon Hitchens.

Pablo (00:02):

I’m Pablo.

Leon (00:03):

Today we’re at Geekdom and we’re talking something near and dear to me, accessibility on the internet

Pablo (00:16):

For joining us. Guys. Today we’re going to talk about accessibility. And I know that this is a really important topic for Leon, which we’ll get into, but it’s going to be a little bit different this time. We’re going to have our normal conversational format, but we will also be inviting a guest, Alexandra Britez, with AccessiBe, to talk about their goals of making the internet more accessible worldwide. So Leon, I know that this isn’t something that you necessarily talk about or promote often, but it’s clearly something that you’re impacted by. I was just thinking maybe we could talk about how, I don’t know, technology is sometimes made more difficult for you being that you’re in the space and you’re a leader in the space, but you still struggle with some things.

Leon (01:07):

Yeah, I think the biggest part in the backstory is I’ve got two good fingers on one hand, and I have another hand. Big part is mouses. Mice are not really built for me, especially being right-handed dominant. So what I rely on a lot is keyboard navigation on websites, so tabs and even just special wands that accessiBe offers a lot of that’s actually built for folks that are blind. It’s pretty useful. But the big part, and this is kind of contested, is how much of the website or the internet is accessible.

(01:47):

It’s somewhere in the range of two to 5%, which is abysmal, it’ss, super small. It’s super low. And when you think about accessibility, somebody with a disability, we’re talking, most people jump to missing arms, legs, blind hearing loss, stuff like that. But there’s so much more nuance to it. Sure. We’ve got a stat here. It’s approximately 15% of the world population, over a billion people live with some form of a disability. And the United States, that accounts for about, I think 20% that data comes from the World Bank. So it is a lot of people. And to have only a small slice of the internet support, this is kind of astonishing. I know Google’s pushed it a lot. Searching and optimization is a big part of accessibility. ALT tags be able to screen read down, but there’s a lot more there that I don’t think people realize or understand is there, and Google Lighthouse touches on it. It talks about accessibility, it gives you you a score, but the standards that are out there, which is It’s the WCAG. Yeah, WCAG, the acronyms 2.0,

Pablo (03:08):

That’s right. Yes.

Leon (03:10):

That’s the best one out there. But it’s also not codified into law, the a a, the Americans with Disability Act, the law, and it never really had a internet component to it. I think it was passed in the 1990s, first Bush, right? Yep. So first Bush passed it through, changed America, really set all this stuff out with people for disabilities in the physical realm. Justice Department has talked about it. They’ve referenced that WCAG, they’ve referenced that. They’ve said that’s kind of like the de facto law, but that WCAG doesn’t really say what you have to do, and that’s where the challenge comes from.

Pablo (03:54):

Yeah, and it’s interesting too is that in our day job, when we build websites, we’ve recommended to multiple clients like, Hey, you should really consider making your website accessible. Well, we’re changing the way we’re operating now with our clients. It’s no longer a choice. It’s either you do it or you have to sign a waiver. And there’s a reason for it. I mean, from a business owner standpoint, not to use scare tactics, but they’re very real. People are being sued, businesses are being impacted every single day.

Leon (04:30):

And not just the big ones either.

Pablo (04:31):

Not just the big ones. No, I mean small businesses. I mean, if you have a website, your website is considered public domain as if you had an office. So if somebody visits your website and it’s not accessible, you can be sued for not allowing all users access, equal access your business. I mean, in effect, and unfortunately, there are some bad actors out there that are out there suing, not necessarily because they’re trying to help make the internet more accessible. They’re obviously taking advantage of the marketplace, but it’s still a fact. If someone isn’t accessible, if somebody can’t use your website, you can become a target in that. When we started working with Accessible, the goal was to be able to educate our customers to just make it a priority. And I used to always say very early on that this does or will have an impact on SEO, because the whole goal of Google is to be able to make the internet accessible to everyone, not necessarily from for people with disabilities, but just in general. And accessibility did share some information with us that there is an impact to SEO results upwards of 12%. I can’t validate that information, but I can say it makes a lot of sense. I mean, in the end, if you’re shutting off the internet to people that can consume your information and then they can’t do it, well, they’re not engaging with your content online. It’s going to impact your numbers. Right. It’s

Leon (06:15):

User experience. It’s user experience. Exactly. I found some stats on that, so I will put them in the show notes, but it says that around 71% of users with some sort of disability will immediately leave a website if it’s not accessible. And then two, when we talk to business owners, one of the things that I’ve mentioned is this isn’t just somebody with disabilities. We’ve got an aging population all over the world.

Pablo (06:39):

Very much so. Absolutely.

Leon (06:42):

As you age, your eyes go,

Pablo (06:46):

I got these two years ago, I know exactly what that means.

Leon (06:49):

And a lot of times that means blowing up text on your phone and all of that. That’s an accessibility feature in the end. So in the business owner’s perspective, it’s not just somebody with a disability, not just getting sued. There’s a social responsibility of like, Hey, you might not have a disability. You might not be impacted at it right now, but if you’re building for a good internet and a good web, you’re probably going to help a good portion of your users. You’re also going to be able to reach more people. You’re going to have an impact to increase your potential market size if a grocery store opens up. Accessibility. I’m kind of interested to go look at grocery websites like Walmart here in Texas, HEB I am curious to see if they have accessibility features built in to there. That is a really huge market, and they are at the core, a public place, public good. And those lawsuits like Target, Harvard, all of the big ones have been sued, but also in San Antonio was the west side of town. I think Mexican restaurants, they’re a dime a dozen here, but they’re all delicious,

Pablo (08:02):

Right? They’re popular for a reason

Leon (08:05):

And they were getting sued. And a $10,000 lawsuit is disruptive and it’s hard to deal with, and

Pablo (08:14):

It can break a back for a small business, I mean as small of a nominal amount as they may seem. It’s not small or nominal for everyone. Exactly.

Leon (08:21):

So there’s two parts here. It’s as a small business owner looking at the risk, looking at the social responsibility, and then looking at the potential market, I think the SEO portion of this is the most interesting because accessibility is showing up on Google Lighthouse. Google says accessibility is there. They don’t outline it as well as well, just like the federal government, they don’t really outline it that well. They don’t say what you need to do, but they do outline it. And in ESA B, they’ve followed the WCAG, and then they’ve also followed other standards that are out there. And then they’ve put in a bunch of things. So if you’re blind, if you’ve got a hearing loss or you don’t have any hearing, you’re deaf. If you cannot use a mouse or a keyboard, there’s a lot of stuff out there that’s being accommodated for. So it is on a business side, I understand it. And most of the time if we, I’ve talked to other WordPress developers, there’s a portion of people that just don’t understand it, don’t know what’s needed. And then the other portion, they want to charge extra to build and develop those features. So some people go, ah, we’ll take the risk and not build those out.

Pablo (09:40):

Well, I’ll just share one story. So we built a website for a client probably five years ago, six years ago, pardon me. And that client spent a fair fee to have the website built. And then about two years after we built it, another company came in to make that website accessible. They didn’t rebuild everything. They just simply added the code base that needed to be added to the core HTML that we had for the site to make the website accessibly compliant. And the issue there was that the cost for that service was almost double what we charged to build it originally. So this isn’t something that necessarily is cheap, which obviously works against someone that has a good heart, wants to make their website accessible, maybe didn’t do it on the front end, so it ends up being more expensive. So anyway, accessibility allows you to add code to your site, an existing site to take components on that website to make them accessible. So it takes care of a lot of the components that need to be addressed without having to go in and reinvent the wheel. While I do think that it is a good practice to just simply build a website fully accessible from the beginning, that’s why we started working withe, because we feel like the tools are allowing the smaller business owners that don’t necessarily have the budget to rebuild their website. The goal in the end is to be able to become accessible without necessarily spending a ton of money.

(12:18):

Absolutely. So

(13:00):

It’s an insurance plan. I mean, in the end, you’re insuring yourself against the possibility because in the end, if you are sued, you just have to prove that you’re making a reasonable effort, right? It is a reasonable effort. I mean, no one can say, look, I added this tool to make my website accessible. And if someone tries to litigate, they can’t make the argument that you didn’t attempt to address it. If there’s things that still need to be addressed, good, you get an opportunity to handle those things. So I think in general, besides the legal ramifications, look, let’s just think of it from a standpoint of just being a good citizen, right? I mean, you want, the number is roughly 20, what was it? 27% of Americans?

Leon (13:46):

Yeah. I think the conservative number that you get from the American disabilities is 21%.

Pablo (13:53):

Okay? What I had seen from the cdc.gov was that 27% of Americans are considered to have some type of disability. I mean, that’s more than one in four. I mean, you would never in your right mind have a business that ignores over a quarter of the population. You just wouldn’t

Leon (14:15):

Do it. And I’m looking at the tool right now. There’s seizure safe profile. I would’ve never even thought of that. No, I don’t. I see it on tv like, Hey, there might be flashing lights and seizures that that’s a hidden disability. You would never know. There is vision impaired profiles. Obviously, that’s maybe a bad way to say it, but that’s something you can kind of tell. You can see you have ADHD friendly profile, more focused, fewer distractions. That’s another hidden disability that I wouldn’t have considered a disability off the top of my head, but it can be. And it is. There’s cognitive disability profiles, reading and focusing kind of tied into that. ADHD. There’s keyboard navigation with loader. That’s what I use a lot. And then there’s blind users, which are screen readers, and then they have other things like highlight titles, highlight links, text magnifier, align center, left, adjust Line Heights, contrast changing saturation is making it monochromatic. If you’re colorblind. These are all things that I don’t think a lot of people would consider disability colorblindness, A DHD, but it is, and it impacts you on a website that has animations, that has things that are moving and bothering you. If a lot of times, my big gripe is everyone sets the web font to 14, and I’m like, I wanted it 18 or 20. I

Pablo (15:45):

Can’t stand that.

Leon (15:46):

Yeah. I’m like,

Pablo (15:47):

Especially on mobile is terrible.

Leon (15:50):

Yes. Even though phones have gotten bigger, the pixel density is higher, and I feel like the text keeps getting more small, but first

Pablo (15:58):

Of all, anyone’s coating with pixels anymore. It’s REMS people. rems, not pixels. But anyway, that’s another topic

Leon (16:05):

Stuck in our ways, but it is a lot more than people consider, and it is a lot of things that you wouldn’t call this disability, but I think you said it was called a 10 Y.

Pablo (16:19):

Oh, it’s a 11 YA 11 y ally. Ally, right?

Leon (16:23):

Is you’re just being a good person and you want to make accommodations for people, and it’s not going to inconvenience you. You’re also going to be able to reach more market, protect yourself from lawsuits, and then I’m sure as a small business, you’re going to be able to then have people go, oh my gosh, thank you for having a seizure safe profile. Thank you for having ability, ability to zoom in, text my father at the restaurants. That’s always his gripe on his phone. His fonts are huge, but I’m like, okay. And if he runs across a website that doesn’t let the font go to the system font, he’s off. He’s like, I don’t want to deal with reading this tiny stuff. So it’s more than just what people think,

Pablo (17:11):

Right? Well, look, I mean, just recently we had a Super Bowl 58. One of the bigger advertisers on there was Google. They have a Google Frame phone that allows people that are vision impaired to take photos that are in focus, and they’re able to just be more, I guess, participatory and in just normal everyday activities that we all take for granted. So Google is now releasing a product that is at its core and has an accessible feature or is intended for accessibility. So this goes to show you that this is not just a, Hey, let’s just make technology applicable to a very large swath of the population just because it’s a cool thing to do. Look, it’s good business at the end of the day, and it’s just you take your leads from what’s happening in the marketplace, but I feel like at the very end, you want to be a leader for the right reasons. So if we talk more about the products, we’re probably going to have a very, very long conversation. We’re going to have Alexandra Britez talk to us to give us AccessiBe’s perspective on what they’re doing to solve the accessibility gap in the marketplace.

(18:38):

Alexandra Britez, welcome to the Boost.

Alexandra Britez (18:40):

Thank you for having me. I’m really excited, really excited to talk a little bit more about accessibility, and thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to just educate everyone a little bit more about accessibility and talk about the tool itself and our mission, and really excited to just spread more awareness as well. This is a really important topic that needs to be discussed more often than it usually does on a day-to-day basis.

Pablo (19:11):

I completely agree. The interesting thing about this conversation is for me, from my perspective, just hoping to promote awareness is that for the large part in the business world, people not only are not aware, but they’re not really educated on things that may not personally affect them. So because out of sight, out of mind kind of thing. So from my perspective, accessibility in my past life, I used to work quite a bit in user experience, and it was my first kind of inner engagement, I guess with accessibility as a topic, looking at user experience and then thinking about the diversity of what a user actually is. A user is not just one type of user, it’s every user. And because of that diversity, you have to think about how people are impacted and building websites now for over the past 20 plus years, it’s become much more of a topic, and really it seems to be more prevalent with businesses that work with governments or the federal government, but it feels like this should be something that everyone has a website or any type of digital medium should be considering. So thank you so much for joining us.

Alexandra Britez (20:39):

Yeah, definitely. I’m very excited. And I think to just kind of piggyback off what you’re saying, for me, I think when it became super prevalent was just during the pandemic and covid itself, your entire life was revolved around being in the internet more than ever from grocery shopping, job interviews, working, socializing, or making any kind of transaction was based on the internet. And I think I thought to myself, wow, I am doing everything online and I am so lucky to be able to access everything, but for people that couldn’t, I couldn’t even imagine trying to navigate my day-to-Day during Covid. And it kind of made me realize that that’s always been the case. It’s not just that moment in time. It’s always been the case since the internet was invented for anyone that has any kind of disability.

Pablo (21:33):

Sure, absolutely. And I’m just thinking for maybe people that have mobility issues, they can’t really leave their home as freely as others. So the internet is kind of the connection to the outside world. And then if you have those connections, but they’re not really considering your needs, that’s got to be terribly frustrating.

Alexandra Britez (21:56):

And I think one of the kind of craziest stats out there that I actually didn’t even realize before I started working here is that only 3% of the Internet’s accessible 3%.

Leon (22:09):

And that part is just how big the internet is. And to see 3%, it’s a small slice of it. And I think what the CDC says, it’s like 27% of Americans live with some sort of visibility. And in the prerecord with Pablo and I, we were talking about things that I don’t think everyone talks about. It’s like as you age, your eyesight just starts to go and you want to increase that font from 18 to 24. So I think there’s a lot of other little parts that people kind of out of sight out of mind, they don’t think it’ll impact them, but at some point in time, there is going to be somebody who’s their grandparents or their parents that might have something. So it’s not just impacting somebody with an issue, but it’s also impacting just everybody living.

Alexandra Britez (23:02):

Yeah, no, definitely. And I think one of the big things, I think there is a big misunderstanding. There’s a lot of solutions and extensions out there, and a lot of them only solve for font size and color. They kind of disregard other disabilities. And I guess one of the main ones that the WCAG talk about the most is obviously blind people using screen readers, motor impaired, using keyboard navigation, epilepsy, color blindness, cognitive and learning disabilities, visual impairments. And a lot of tools that are out there are just kind of utilizing just font size and color when there’s so much more to solve out there. So you’re a hundred percent correct. There’s way more than just what we think a disability is when we’re trying to access a site.

Leon (23:54):

A hundred percent. The epilepsy, something I didn’t think about, and I don’t generally have to think about, but I do see it on a TV show of, Hey, bright lights flashing. And I’ve seen websites with bright lights and fat flashing, and it’s never dawned on me. So just I think part of this too, and accessibility is thinking about others around you and just how they use things, how people are interacting with it and being the good citizen is. But you did mention the standards. There’s the WCAG, I know there’s ADA, which is the overarching one, and then there’s I think two or three other ones like the S 5 0 8 that pop up. But what does SSE follow, and then how does all of these standards come together within your tool?

Alexandra Britez (24:47):

Yeah, I guess I’ll kind of start with a little bit of a background on access. So our founders, well Access was founded back in 2018. Our founders were basically realizing that making sites accessible were costly, very time consuming, there’s tons of maintenance involved. And for a small business, it’s almost impossible to basically afford a solution like that or have any kind of manual remediation. So what we actually did was launch something called Access Widget. So it’s the first ever AI machine learning software that was developed with the understanding that business owners need a solution that is simple, affordable, and of course achieves compliance. So the product was actually developed over the course of two years side by side with people with disabilities. So a lot of ’em are leading experts in accessibility and assistive technologies. And now in 2024, we have over 247,000 customers.

Leon (25:54):

That’s impressive.

Alexandra Britez (25:56):

And just to kind of dig a little bit deeper into the WCG for people as familiar, the WCGA compliant level is the global accepted standard. And basically what it means is it’s in a thousand page guidebook explaining what accessible sites look and operate like with people with disabilities. As I mentioned earlier, it’s blind users using screen readers, keyboard navigation for motor impairments, epilepsy, blindness, and learning disabilities. And it’s also really important to note that keyboard navigation and screen readers actually make up 80% of the WCHE requirements.

Pablo (26:46):

So let me ask you a question. As far as excessively is concerned in terms of addressing this problem, as far as the business world is concerned, the adoption rate at least increasing, do you see that it’s more of a common conversation? This is an example, this is now three years ago, and I know that you’re in New York, right? Yes. So there was a client that I had, or we actually still have that is in Manhattan, and they had a website built with us. This was probably in 2018 or so, about two years later, maybe 20 20, 20 21, maybe three years later, there was another company that was doing accessibility remediation and did a proposal and they began engaging with that client. And just to throw numbers out, just so you’re aware, we built that website for a price tag of about $3,500. And it was a very functional website for very specific things that they needed from just a PR and press perspective.

(28:07):

But they had some elements that were not properly accessible. What the accessibility remediation business that came in charged seven, $500 to make it fully accessible. And just to give people an idea of really, and obviously cost will range from inexpensive to expensive in any business, but I don’t believe that accessibility remediation is one of those areas where people will skim out on. So the price tag does go up and look in a place like New York where it’s one of the states where being sued for not having accessible websites or not being accessible in any medium for that matter, physical or otherwise. But the thing is that cost was significantly more than what we had charged. And while we are using tools that are bringing in more of the accessible commentary into the development conversation like Aria labels on a web build, those are starting to become more and more integrated into web tools.

(29:14):

However, most people don’t know how to use them. There’s not like an instruction set or manual of what are the best practices to be able to do that. So most of the time what ends up happening is people just ignore it and then they still remain with that risk. What I have found is in our business, when we work with a client, we inform them of the risk. We offer them the ability to work with necessity, and it sort of takes care of the issues upfront as opposed to waiting until someone notifies them that they’ve actively become victims of a lawsuit. And that’s the way I see it. It’s a value add from the standpoint of protection. But also, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, we want to make sure that the market is accessible to everyone if you’re selling a product or service. And I think the note that really kind of jumped out to me as far as inaccessibility in the marketplace is that 27% of the population is affected with some type of disability. So if 27% of the population is affected, that means that only 73% of the population is available to you for selling a product market or service. So it seems to me that that would be logical that you would want to open up to every possible user that you could potentially sell services to. I mean, would you agree that that’s a fairly logical statement?

Alexandra Britez (30:49):

Oh, a hundred percent. And I think just to kind of piggyback off of that, the three main reasons why people decide to become accessible is ROI, the disability community has $8 trillion in disposable income, but some of them can’t even access a site. And I know myself, I hate to admit it, I am a huge online shopper. I was never a big online shopper before. And I will spend money, and I’m a huge brand loyalist. There’s a lot of people that don’t even have that opportunity because they can’t access their website. So you’re losing out on business brand loyalists, people that will really ride for your brand and reputation. So you’re missing out on all that ROI. But another big thing to note too is a lot of companies also do it for DEI reasons. One big thing that I even heard last week was even for hiring, don’t you want to be able to attract different kinds of talent and even let someone apply to your a job opening that you have on your site? I think that’s huge. So R-O-I-D-I and mitigating risk have always been the top three reasons why people decide to become accessible.

Pablo (32:02):

So I have a question for you. Could you maybe share some success stories, maybe not necessarily dropping company names if you choose not to, but would you be able to share a success story in the space using accessive?

Alexandra Britez (32:17):

Yeah, I think I’ll do kind of more like a general one. I’m not really allowed to disclose,

Pablo (32:23):

Of course, I understand that.

Alexandra Britez (32:25):

But I think just one big one that I think about all the time is even having access. I think we work with a lot of people in healthcare, tons of people in healthcare, and I think for them, they obviously treat all types of patients when they come into the office. But I think one big thing when we’re talking to maybe a surgeon or a specialist, one thing they forget about is because their entire life revolves around helping other people and doing their job, not necessarily updating their website or maybe doing certain things. They forget that there’s, although there’s customers or clients or patients that they have in front of them that they can treat, there’s a lot that can’t even access their site for them to get new potential patients. And I think that for me is it’s so valuable. I know for me, whenever I have any kind of specialist or doctor one, you have a special bond with them.

(33:24):

Basically your livelihood is in their hands. But I think healthcare in general, I think it’s so important to be able to give that access to people that can’t even book an appointment on your site. But there’s tons and tons of other success stories too, with maybe brick and mortar stores that became online businesses during the pandemic that are small businesses that decided to start selling things online and they have more customers coming to their site because it’s more accessible. And another thing to note too is making your site accessible does increase SEO by 12%. So you’re putting yourself in front of a lot more people.

Pablo (34:12):

That was a point that actually stood out to me because I have been making, and Leon knows, I’ve mentioned to him years ago, I said, I know that accessibility has an impact on user experience. So if it has an impact on user experience, it has to have an impact search engine optimization. And the facts just weren’t really promoted by Google or any of the major search engines, so I really couldn’t make those claims. But 12%, I mean, that’s a significant, I guess, increase in user engagement.

Alexandra Britez (34:50):

Yeah, no, definitely. SEMrush actually did the study back a couple of years ago. They have some amazing stats that they came out with too, and they kind of go more in depth into it as well. But I know it’s something that I actually didn’t even know until I started working here too.

Pablo (35:10):

Yeah. So lemme ask you that question then. What brought you to accessible?

Alexandra Britez (35:15):

Yeah, I guess I kind of think back on the last couple of jobs that I’ve had, and they’ve been great tools, but they’re not changing the world in any way. I hope my old employers don’t listen to this.

Pablo (35:34):

They might agree with you.

Alexandra Britez (35:35):

Yeah, it’s not doing anything groundbreaking for everyone, it’s just doing something kind of maybe groundbreaking for their specific industry. And in this instance, we’re working with all types of people all over the world trying to do something better. And like I mentioned, I think the biggest shock for me was just the fact that only 3% of websites are accessible. I think that’s insane because we live day to day on the internet, on our phones, on our laptops. And I know obviously I mentioned Covid earlier, but a lot of that got passed down to the now too. People are still working remotely, people are still spending getting groceries delivered to their home. But I think that’s been the big thing. It’s just a great mission trying to make websites more accessible for everyone.

Pablo (36:32):

I would agree. Leon, do you have any additional comments?

Leon (36:37):

No. The one thing is the keyboard navigation. I use it a lot. Normal mouse is not great. Then Microsoft has to those mobility ones, they’ve done a lot of accessibility and there’s a big push for that, I think post covid, but a lot of people shop online. There’s a lot of that. So I do appreciate when I come across a site that got a SES ae or they got keyboard navigation because it lets me keep my hands on the keyboard and not have to fiddle with a track pad or a specialized mouse. But just hearing all of it from the increase in SEO, I think you guys have some other stats too, in terms of increase in organic traffic, it was 50% up. Those are some really good metrics for a small business that went online. I’ve seen even plant stores go online and you can’t even press the checkout with a keyboard navigation or tab over in the fields.

(37:34):

And that’s one of the most infuriating things to see that because I’m like, oh man, let me navigate. And then it doesn’t click in the right spot. But I think it’s like that moral kind of obligation of just being around and being helpful around you. It’s the same thing as putting a ramp into your building. And that’s what these business owners have to start considering is, Hey, do I have that ramp into my building? Do I have stairs that might not be there? And if I do, hey, there’s a label somewhere that says, Hey, there’s flashing lights. Hey, there’s a lot of colors, stuff like that. I just think putting it out there is really good, and I think it’s a cause and seeing necessity, shepherd that along and talk about it, pull these stats and kind of frame it in, not just that doing good on the internet, but also you’re opening up business space, you’re opening up more SEO, and then you’re just getting more business, I think is going to encourage a lot of these business owners to kind of think of it, frame it, and then talk about that ROI. Because in the end, a business just needs to see how does investing in something no matter what it is there. I know on the side that I think 21 or 22 was the biggest year of lawsuits for a DA and California and New York. There is some fear behind that, but it’s not the driving force.

(39:00):

Yeah, exactly. And just to kind of piggyback on what you’re saying too, we work with tons of small businesses. We work with some enterprise, but I would say a majority of people that work with us are small businesses. And a lot of those small businesses, kind of Pablo and experience that you had years ago, they got a quote from manual remediation and kind of freaked out because it’s more than what they expected. And I think it’s also just important to know that I think actually a lot of small business owners don’t know too, they’re trying to do the right thing, but maybe they’re a little nervous about what the cost is. We have pretty transparent pricing, but I would say if you’re a small business, if you have less than 30 employees or make less than a million dollars, they are eligible to get money back every single year they decide to make their websites accessible. I think it’s something that isn’t talked about as much, but for small businesses that maybe can’t afford as much as a big enterprise company, that’s always something that’s a little bit of a help as well.

Pablo (40:09):

Absolutely. Yeah, and I think that’s just part of the education process that at least from our standpoint in our small digital space here in San Antonio, we’re trying to promote as much as possible just as a default, this is how we operate, this is how we work. It is a change in business approach. And look, I mean, you don’t force a client necessarily to do it, but there’s indemnification statements now because as an agency in a business, I also want to protect my own business. I mean, if you’re asking me to work in a condensed space, I don’t want to be responsible for when the building comes down. I hate to put it in those terms, but from an agency protection standpoint and a business protection, it’s not just the client’s business that you’re protecting, you’re also protecting your agency as well. So it just makes sense. I mean, call it insurance policy, call it whatever you will, but it’s just smart business in general. So Alexandra, I really appreciate your time joining us today and spreading the word about necessity and what’s the best way for folks to learn about necessity?

Alexandra Britez (41:20):

Yeah, there is actually all you could do is go on accessibility.com. One good thing is that you can actually do a free audit on your website to see whether you’re compliant or non-compliant. It’ll kind of give you a little bit of an overview of what the issues may be. Or you could just reach out to our support team, and they’re more than happy to go through a full blown demonstration with you and actually talk a little bit more in depth about accessibility overall and the widget itself and the problems that you’re trying to solve for. But yeah, just going on, access bee.com is

Pablo (41:54):

Wonderful.

Alexandra Britez (41:55):

All the recent. Thank you.

Leon (41:57):

We’ll put that information in the show notes and make sure people can go find that and navigate to go get that site audit. I think that’s helpful.

Alexandra Britez (42:05):

Oh, yeah, it’s always really helpful.

Pablo (42:08):

Well, thank you again, Alexandra, for joining us on The Boost, and certainly look forward to continuing to work with your organization and yourself.

Alexandra Britez (42:17):

Yeah, thank you everyone.

Leon (42:19):

Thank you for joining us today on The Boost. We had their special guest, Anna Alexandra Bries from accessiBe. If you want to learn more information about acessibility and accessiBe, you can visit [email protected]. That’s A-C-C-E-S-S-I be.com, and you can find us on YouTube at the Boost Channel and then with our newish domain, that’s the Boost dot FM. So thank you for joining us today. See you next time.