Congratulations on choosing to have an accessible and inclusive website. We’re so excited to welcome you into our community of businesses and organizations. As a market leader in the web accessibility industry, we are proud to power over 200,000 websites and partner with thousands of disability-focused non-profits. Our vision is an inclusive and accessible internet and we are thrilled you’ve joined us.
With accessWidget, you can transform your website into one that welcomes everyone and complies with legal standards. Your accessiBe portal is the home for your accessWidget information and many more accessibility resources. But before you head there, let’s go over the basics of getting accessWidget up and running.
Installing accessWidget
Let’s begin with your accessWidget installation. There are two options for a smooth installation:
- Use one of our integration plugins
- Copy and paste our installation code into your website's source code
If you’ve installed accessWidget using a plugin, you’re all set. The plugins take care of everything for you. If you’ve used accessWidget’s installation code, make sure that accessiWidget is installed directly within the body tag of your HTML (it doesn’t matter whether it’s in the opening or closing of the tag). You can also install it within your head tag, however, within the body is ideal.
Make sure that you don’t load accessWidget in a separate JS file (but directly within your source code). Do not wrap accessWidget’s script with custom logic like load delays or otherwise, and do not add any custom CSS or JS to override any of accessWidget’s functions.
Now accessWidget can scan your website for an accessibility analysis. We have servers worldwide, so do not block specific geolocations or use firewalls because that same technology can accidentally block the accessiBe process. Some of our bots and servers can be whitelisted, others cannot. If you need to keep those blocks in place, you can whitelist accessWidget by contacting our support team directly for help.
Testing accessWidget
After accessWidget is installed, it’s time to test your website and make sure that it’s running smoothly. To ensure that accessWidget loads properly on your website and that our scanners function as intended, run an audit with accessScan. Your result should be “Accessible.” If the scan doesn’t load or gives you a result other than “Accessible,” reach out to us for assistance because that means the integration isn’t working properly.
For more thorough testing, you can use our testing guide - it’s easy to understand. It covers keyboard navigation, screen-reader adjustments, UI and design-related adjustments, and automated testing and monitoring.
Best practices and general accessibility recommendations
To get the most out of accessWidget, here are the best practices for integration and optimization.
Ensuring Image descriptions are accurate
Image descriptions, also known as alt text (or an HTML alt attribute), are used by screen readers to describe an image’s content to users who are blind. accessWidget creates image descriptions using AI.
For example, the alt text for an image of people playing with a ball on the beach with the text “50% off beachwear” will appear like this: “50% off beachwear. People playing football on the beach during daytime”.
AI can sometimes lack the context that we humans have. For example, if those people on the beach are famous football players like Messi and Ronaldo, AI won’t know who they are 100% of the time, which can be important information to convey to the user. To ensure that your website has the most accurate alt text possible, we recommend reviewing the image descriptions after accessWidget is up and running.
Here’s everything you need to know about adding alt text to your website.
Ensuring manual accessibility work doesn’t override accessiBe’s
As a policy, accessiBe honors any manual accessibility work already implemented and doesn’t override it. We understand that if you’ve expressly and explicitly implemented accessibility adjustments, you want them to remain intact.
This enables website owners and coders to incorporate accessibility in more ways than one. Websites can implement manual work as complementary to accessiBe or the opposite, depending on their knowledge, skills, and budgets.
So, if you’ve implemented manual accessibility adjustments without a proper understanding of how web accessibility works and your manual work is incorrect, accessiBe won’t always override it (it will override it in some cases, but mostly it won’t). For this reason, if you have any manual accessibility implemented on your website, it’s important to know that accessWidget won’t necessarily correct manual mistakes. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Reporting and resolving accessibility issues
If you, your development team, or a user experience an accessibility issue, we want to know about it immediately so we can solve it. Don’t hesitate to contact our customer service and technical support teams.
Going beyond automation
With accessWidget, you’ve already chosen to prioritize accessibility and inclusion. However, your website may include elements that are not a part of your website’s source code, leaving you with some steps to take to ensure accessibility and compliance. For example, if you have videos or PDFs on your website, they will need captions to make sure people with disabilities can access them. That’s why accessiBe has accessServices, our team of industry experts ready to take on any manual accessibility project.
As your website evolves, accessiBe is here to grow with you. Whether you want to check your accessibility status, learn more about inclusion best practices, or start a new accessibility project, the portal is your home for everything related to web accessibility.
We’re excited to be a part of your journey!