The internet is inevitable. Despite its stark origins and initially-spartan purpose, the World Wide Web has become entirely ubiquitous in modern life. Whether for business, for educational purposes, or simply for leisure, almost everyone across the globe uses the Internet, wherever possible. That said, a sad fact is that the Internet is not always accessible to everyone. For some, barriers exist that keep them from using online content or resources. These can be physical disabilities or conditions.

15 percent of the world’s population or an estimated 1 billion people live with disabilities. They are the world’s largest minority, according to the World Health Organization. Eighty percent of persons with disabilities live in developing countries, and around 7 million people with a visual disability in the United States, according to the National Federation of the Blind. Many of them find the modern web to be lacking. One study by an accessibility software company in August 2020 found that 70 percent of the websites it surveyed, ranging from e-commerce to news to government services, contain “accessibility blocks,” or quirks in the design that make them unreadable with assistive technology. Another accessibility report analyzing the top million homepages on the web estimates that just 1 percent meet the most widely used accessibility standards. People who use screen readers are regularly confronted with readouts like “unlabeled button” or “image1.jpg” in place of the descriptive information they need to navigate.

To prevent or mitigate this, nations laid out policies to make web content accessible to all their citizens. By making the website accessible, we can ensure that all potential users, including people with disabilities, have a decent user experience and can easily access information. By implementing accessibility best practices, we can also improve the usability of the site for all users.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), are the most widely known and adopted web accessibility standards. Most country-specific accessibility standards are based on WCAG 2.0 and related bodies of work. WCAG 2.0 explains, in broad terms, how to make web content accessible to people with disabilities. When a website meets the WCAG 2.0 standards, users with disabilities will generally have access to the same functionality and information as the users without disabilities. According to Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Hearing Aid Compatibility Act, it is a legal requirement to provide equal website accessibility to all people, including people with disabilities. It is mandated by law, especially for banks/government entity websites, that they are ADA and 508 compliant. Companies need to ensure that their websites are equally accessible to everyone regardless of their physical challenges. RioGlobal is a web accessibility company that provides website accessibility solutions to everyone by finding issues and optimizing search engines to offer accessibility compliance for businesses and a more significant user web experience. Its mission is to provide equal opportunity to people regardless of their disability and empower them to participate actively and contribute to websites.

RioGlobal offers an automated testing software product called AccessBot, which is an accessibility automation tool. It is a web-based pluggable tool and browser extension designed to meet the 508 standards and WCAG Compliance of the company’s websites and is also offered on a freemium basis. Accessbot performs diagnostic testing, checks for violations, and produces a statistical and an easy to understand report with the severity of those violations so that the company knows the extent to which the website is out of compliance. It crawls through the 100 pages of the website 75% faster than its competitors enabling the web development teams to detect accessibility issues upfront in their production lifecycle. But in this, the developer has to manually change the code to fix the problem. Now, RioGlobal has added a new feature known as AutoFix.

AutoFix is a tool for the automated repair of violations for making the website pages compliant for all. AutoFix is a cloud-based program that reviews the page that one is currently viewing. It searches for violations, and if any are found, it automatically corrects them. The operation of AutoFix is effortless. The user doesn’t have to do anything, everything happens in the background; AutoFix works its magic behind the scene without causing any interruptions to the user. Using AutoFix, people with disabilities can effectively perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the web. They can utilize the internet to the optimum.

AutoFix benefits not only the user but also the developers by reducing their efforts to make the website accessible to everyone. They just have to embed one line javascript snippet on their website. This helps to auto remediate and automatically make the website and its page complaint. It saves developers time and is also highly efficient.

More about Accessbot:

What is Accessibility consulting? Accessibility consulting is the process in which a client hires consulting firms that can go through a system, test it for accessibility issues, and submit a report. In short, accessibility means making sure the client website, web application, or mobile app is user-friendly for all users.

Companies interested in taking advantage of the fast, innovative, and cost-effective website accessibility services from accessbot.io can visit the Rio Global website.

Customer service and continuous improvement guide Rio Global's team. Accessbot.io is its star product, offering scalability, configurability, customization, security, integration, and ease of use. Whether Accessbot.io is used as a cloud-based system or installed internally, companies relying on it know their websites. All collateral materials remain error-free and completely compliant with Section 508. Rely on the best in the business. Rely on Rio Global's accessbot.io.