Your clients will benefit tremendously from having an accessibility solution installed on their website.
But knowing when to broach the topic of a subscription-based tool will have a critical impact on your clients’ willingness to allocate budget toward it.
In this blog, we’ll present four stages at which to present the option of using an accessibility solution on your clients’ websites. We’ll highlight the benefits of bringing web accessibility to their attention at each specific stage, and show you how you can go about doing it.
Interested in joining accessiBe’s Partner Program? Press here to see if you’d make a good fit.
Option 1: Before building their website
During the discovery phase, you will be presenting your prospective clients with an outline of a website that will best serve their needs. Naturally, this phase involves a lot of listening on your part, and requires that you really understand each client’s unique case, business goals, and, just as importantly, budget constraints.
The advantages of pitching an accessibility solution at this stage
- This phase is when you typically propose other important plugins and add-ons that your clients should opt for, so it makes sense to add an accessibility solution to your pitch deck (and preferably at the top of the list)
- Presenting an accessibility tool now allows you to showcase true transparency with your clients. This will help you build a level of credibility that can improve the chances of them agreeing to pay for such a solution
- Even if they choose not to move forward at this phase, you will have successfully introduced them to web accessibility, its importance and business potential, as well as the potential legal ramifications of presenting a website that will ultimately discriminate against people with disabilities
We recommend you check out these blogs for more information regarding the legal aspects of web accessibility:
- What is the ADA?
- How to Avoid ADA Website Compliance Lawsuits
- ADA Demand Letter for Websites: A Complete Guide
Option 2: While building your clients’ website
When working on your client’s website, you gain a better understanding of the digital barriers it may pose to visitors with disabilities. The more complex the website, the more accessibility issues it will likely suffer from.
The advantages of pitching an accessibility solution at this stage
- When there is a tangible website or wireframe to share with your clients, they can gain a better grasp of the problems the finalized product will present to their visitors with disabilities
- During this phase, you can install an accessibility solution, like accessWidget, using a free trial. This will allow you to show clients the benefits of an accessibility issue both from a code-perspective (i.e., allowing for keyboard only navigation and screen reader compatibility), and in terms of the user interface visitors to your clients’ websites can leverage to better engage with it
We recommend you check out these pages for more information on accessWidget and the ways in which it will help your clients become accessible:
Option 3: Once you’ve completed building your clients’ website
The advantages of pitching an accessibility solution at this stage
- Installing an accessibility solution, like accessWidget, at this point will highlight just how critical an impact it will have on the user experience of website visitors with disabilities.
- Existing clients are always open to new ideas if and when they are presented with a strong enough business case to justify its price. Web accessibility has a clear impact on a website’s SEO performance, and opens your online business up to a significantly larger audience base.
If your client’s website is an online store, an accessibility solution will allow visitors with disabilities to actually purchase goods and services, which they would not otherwise be able to. Additionally, your clients will likely need to comply with accessibility laws, which they may not be aware of yet.
Option 4: If your clients are met with legal recourse
Web accessibility is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions. If a client’s website is found to have accessibility issues, they can face legal recourse, such as receiving a demand letter, detailing the accessibility issues present within it.
It would only be natural to recommend an accessibility solution at this point. Once installed on their websites, tools like accessWidget will scan your client’s site and remediate the accessibility issues highlighted in the demand letter they received. This will see them properly addressing the letter and mitigating further legal risks, such as ADA compliance lawsuits.
Make sure to join accessiBe’s Partner Program for Agencies
When you join accessiBe’s Partner Program for Agencies, you earn a 20% commission on each client website you install accessWidget on.
accessiBe’s flagship accessibility solution, accessWidget automatically audits a website’s code and remediates the accessibility issues within it. It also presents website visitors with an interface through which they can tweak UI and design elements to better fit their unique needs.
You can install accessWidget on a website built on any CMS or site building platform, including WordPress, Shopify, BigCommerce, Webflow, Squarespace, Wix, Drupal, and Joomla.