Are you looking for ways to make your site accessible to your disabled customers?
If you are, then here’s an innovative tool you can use: accessiBe.
AccessiBe is the first and only automatic solution powered by artificial intelligence that makes websites usable for persons with disabilities (PWDs).
By using accessiBe, you allow them to enjoy exploring your pages and business painlessly. Adjusting your site with this tool won’t even disrupt your branding design and layout.
You also make your site compliant to the American Disability Act (ADA), which requires websites to have a PWD-friendly user experience.
That said, in this review, we will look into some prominent accessiBe features and how you can make your website more handy for your disabled customers.
Let’s begin.
Foreground Application
AccessiBe adjusts your foreground application so that your user interface becomes more pleasant for your disabled customers.
This aspect pertains more to your site appearance and ease of navigation.
With accessiBe, PWDs can begin to adjust these elements and more according to their needs and preferences.
They only need to click on this icon:
Image source: Dunham’s Sports
For this article, we will look into Dunham’s Sports website for most examples, which originally looks this way without implementing the accessibility options:
Seeing the original appearance will help you identify and compare the changes that I will show in the next sections.
Now, here’s how you can modify the elements on your foreground application.
Content Readability
For your disabled customers — especially the visually impaired ones — to consume your content well, you need to make it readable for them.
That means your font styles should be easy on their eyes, text sizes are large enough, and others.
To make that happen, accessiBe lets your users choose from any of these tools:
It can increase your website’s font sizes, change font styles, emphasize titles and links, magnify the text, scale content, and adjust word spacing and text alignment.
As an example, I clicked on the options Emphasize Links and Readable Font. I also increased the font size by 130 percent.
Here’s what it looks like:
To emphasize links, accessiBe encloses the text in an orange box. The font style in the site’s menus changed as well into a simpler one to enhance its readability.
You can even enlarge the text further when you click on Text Magnifier. It then looks like this:
Users will see a larger and separate text window when they hover their mouse on the text.
Color and Display
To accommodate your customers with visual impairments, you should also adjust your color and display settings.
The right colors for your disabled users help enhance your content readability, which eventually helps boost your organic traffic and other performance indicators.
AccessiBe provides these tools:
You can invert colors and set your site appearance to high contrast, high saturation, monochrome, dark contrast, and a light contrast.
When you invert the colors, for instance, the site will look this way:
Color-blinded users, in particular, can benefit from options to change the text and background colors. They can pick the colors according to what they can and can’t distinguish.
AccessiBe also has the Stop Animations option.
This setting is useful for users suffering from disorders like epilepsy.
When they click the option, accessiBe instantly pauses all flashy GIFs, videos, CSS animations, and others that can trigger seizures for the users.
Virtual Keyboard
To cater to your motor-impaired customers, accessiBe provides the Virtual Keyboard tool.
When these users enable this setting, a keyboard pops up on their screens when they fill in a form or field.
I clicked on the Email field to sign up, as an example, and here’s how the virtual keyboard appeared:
Online Dictionary
If you have customers with cognitive disorders, they can benefit from accessiBe’s online dictionary.
Users can find the online dictionary at the upper portion of the accessiBe window, as seen below:
Impaired users can enter slang and other terms they may not understand, such as “bae” or “lit.” accessiBe then shows results and explanations from Wikipedia and Wiktionary.
Background Application
Your background application is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in.
AI, specifically machine learning, studies and learns the structure, functionality, and hierarchy of your site, images, links, and other elements.
It then applies various behaviors and Accessible Rich Internet Application (aria) attributes to fill in any ADA-compliance gap your site may have.
Through AI, accessiBe uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and image recognition technologies so it can describe the photos, particularly to blind users.
Included in the background application that accesiBe works on are the screen reader and keyboard navigation adjustments.
These functionalities are most useful for your visually and motor-handicapped customers.
Screen Readers
When you click on Screen Readers, accessiBe automatically turns on the settings for keyboard and letter navigation and focus mode.
Screen readers are most helpful for blind users. This setting works by converting recognizable graphics and images into Braille or synthesized speech.
This is where the OCR and image recognition software can help. The descriptions they create or record are what the screen readers will relay to the users.
Impaired users can also access the screen reader option by pressing the keyboard shortcut Alt + 1.
Keyboard navigation
AccessiBe also lets your handicapped consumers modify their cursors so they can navigate your website more smoothly.
They can turn it into a big black or white one and make it more emphasized for better orientation.
Among others, users can even choose to mute sounds, hide images, and proceed to the site’s main menus from the accessiBe window.
Extra Features
Your disabled customers, especially the blind and motor-impaired, can also benefit from other accessiBe features.
When users turn on the screen reader mode and press Alt + 1, they can access the Quick Navigation panel. They can go to desired pages, even using other keys like the Tab and arrows.
If your impaired consumers can’t understand English, they can change the interface language and select among nine others, such as German and Italian.
They can find interface language settings at the top of the window, and a box of options appear, like this:
Disabled consumers can also turn on the Accessible Printing mode. accessiBe shortens the process so they can choose from a few settings and directly print the page from there.
Installation
Installing accessiBe into your website is a straightforward process.
Create your accessiBe account (or sign in if you already have one), and link it to your website.
accessiBe will then lead you through the installation phase, where you will receive a code that you can embed on your site.
Once you install the single line of JS code, your website immediately displays the accessibility interface.
accessiBe’s AI scans and makes your site ADA-compliant within 48 hours. It continually does this every 24 hours to fill any compliance gap.
Remember, any accessibility adjustment your impaired customer makes on your site is personalized. It only appears on their screens and is saved their browser’s cookies.
Hence, the original design of your website appears as is when other users don’t enable the accessibility options.
AccessiBe: the smart solution for you
AccessiBe is an easy-to-use and intelligent tool both for you and your disabled customers.
It displays an array of accessibility options for them on a light and straightforward interface.
The tool also makes installation painless for you, and smartly tailors your site so you can remain ADA-compliant and PWD-friendly (including continually growing in terms of sales and traffic).
AccessiBe is the perfect solution you’re looking for to make your online store the handiest it can be for all your customers, no matter what their needs may be.
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