Sheena Salmon - Review & Testimonial

Sheena, I appreciate you coming out. Sheena, you're with the Discover Tech team, a web development agency that does some other awesome things.

We've been partnered with you. We appreciate the partnership. We hope to strengthen ties, and I have a few questions for you about accessibility and accessiBe in general. So I'd love to get your mind share on these. The first question is, what made you look for an accessibility solution for your clients?

So I used to work for Winn-Dixie, which has now become like a huge thing. They’re one of the first companies to get sued for accessibility non-compliance and take it to court.

They ended up losing and ended up crossing a whole bunch of money. So I started on an accessibility path. I did the 508 certifications. I'm working on one from the IAP, so it's become

a bigger deal now, accessibility compliance. It started to move into being more mainstream. And more of like a concern for people cause they're starting to realize that yeah, people are taking people to court and people are sorry to lose money and becoming smaller businesses.

So there's a target on a lot of our clients back. We needed something to bridge the gap because many people can't afford to redo their entire website.

Yeah. That's. Yeah.

So Winn-Dixie, we were explaining before it was just a pivotal time, a pivotal moment for the web accessibility world, and it's cool that you were actually on the ground there while that happened.

I'm sure that it wasn't as fantastic cause you were in the middle of it. But what kind of set the groundwork for you being where you’re today.

I'm sure that you're thankful for it now, at least. And if I can ask you why it's so important for you to make your clients’ websites accessible?

Yeah, so, I mean, besides lawsuits being a big deal now, more people realize that there's revenue potential for opening up your website to being accessible.

So you're opening it up to about 26% of Americans who have some sort of disability. So by opening up your website with an accessible solution, you can get more revenue. Like you can generate more income for your business.

Yeah. Do you think that when you explain to them the kind of inclusive aspect of web accessibility, are people kind of in shock when that happens? Because they don't come from our world, we're on the front lines. We hear about this stuff every day you have firsthand, so I'm wondering how they respond to that when they

realize the sheer number of people out there still severed from equal access, right.

Yeah. So I don't think that many people realize the scope of disability, especially here in America, you guys are in Israel, so I don't know what it's like over there, but many people think that accessibility is just blind people. So you don't see that many blind people.

Yeah.

So you don't think about anybody else, but then you also have people who have low motor skills. So if your website isn't keyboard accessible, then they can't use it like colorblindness is another big one because I think there's one in five or six males has filler blindness of some capacity. So I think a lot of people just don't think about other disabilities. They only think about blind people. So explain to them that there's this whole market of people that can't use your website because not just, they can't see, and then it won't get read by a screen reader; it’s also like other disabilities that people don't think about.

Yeah, no, that's a really good point.

Yeah. There are like 50 plus disabilities out there. At least 50 disabilities are registered as disabilities that hinder somebody's ability to access the web appropriately. That's also staggering and, yeah, very surprising because a lot of people just don't know that, but it's good that we're here, and I'll also ask you, I'm sure that you also did a lot of research coming from that world from the Winn-Dixie side of things. How did you vet, and how did you ultimately choose, or why did you ultimately choose to partner with accessiBe?

Yeah, so I did a bunch of research; I looked at a bunch of different tools, not just like plugins but

also like remediation services and companies that do that sort of stuff. One of the things that attracted on accessiBe was the features.

So if you compare it to UserWay, UserWay has a lot fewer capabilities. It doesn't cover as much as what the accessiBe tool does. And then the cost is the other thing. So it's pretty cheap for the year, it's like $490, depending on your website size.

But that was one of the other big things. It's like, well, it has all these capabilities that a lot of the other third party plugins don't have. It's easy to install, and it's cheap. So it was something that made it easier for us to sell clients on a platform for accessibility. It's like, why not spend $400 and be protected from the lawsuit?

Yeah, no, it seems like a no brainer at that point, which is why we've been in such a hyper-growth mode. Finally, people understand that there is a way to make your

website accessible and without costing 15 grand a year, even for small websites.

We’re appreciative of you being partnered with us, Discover Tech, serious company, serious partnership. Thank you very much, by the way, for joining me; it was a pleasure.