In this episode, we try to figure out how much accessibility should be considered enough for a microbusiness. As it turns out, that isn’t a very easy question to answer.

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Chris: Welcome to the Accessibility Craft Podcast, where we explore the art of creating accessible websites while trying out interesting craft beverages. This podcast is brought to you by the team at Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility company, and the proud creators of the Accessibility Checker plugin. And now onto the show.

Amber: Hey everybody, it’s Amber and I’m here today with Chris.

Chris: Hey, everybody.

Amber: And Steve.

Steve: Hello everyone.

Amber: And we are super excited to be diving into a topic that people ask about a lot, which is if you a, are a micro business with a very small website, how much accessibility is enough? This is episode number 128.

If you are interested, you can find a transcript and show notes at AccessibilityCraft.com/128. Of course, we start every episode with a beverage.

Today’s Beverage

Amber: What are we drinking today, Chris?

Chris: I am, I’m bringing back the energy drinks after a several month hiatus. We’re bringing out Plant Press Clean Caffeine and we’re getting the watermelon flavor because when this airs, it will still be Summer. This is coming out in August. But it’s energy plus hydration. And this one kind of intrigued me because it’s not just like they put pure caffeine extract or whatever into the can.

It’s like a green coffee bean juice. So it’s like unroasted coffee beans is what’s providing the caffeine. And then fruit juice, and it’s supposed to be you know, low sugar, but real ingredients, energy drink. So the polar opposite of Monster energy.

Amber: So I wanna say something, you were like, we’re bringing back the energy drinks. It’s like the least amount of energy or enthusiasm that I think I have ever heard. So everyone can listen to see if your tone and your excitement changes throughout this episode.

Chris: Yeah, we’ll see if my energy levels go up.

Steve: That’s right. Well need, needless to say, Chris needs some caffeine. Says one can equal to one cup of coffee. That’s quite a bit of caffeine.

Amber: I appreciate that as someone who is always what do the milligrams mean? I like that they translated it to something that is probably more understandable for average people.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s no artificial sweeteners. So, Amber , I was thinking of you. Lemme try this out, but I’m gonna crack this open.

Amber: Tell me, yeah. You guys are cracking it open. Tell me about green coffee beans though.

Chris: So, coffee doesn’t come off the plant in the form that most of us consume it.

So it’s like a, it’s like a bean that’s bright green and really hard and dense and you have to treat it in order to be able to drink it. I’m not sure what the process is for… You can make coffee, I’m pretty sure from green coffee beans. It doesn’t have much flavor going on, and it’s probably harder to extract, but usually they’re, you know, you roast ’em and then you grind them and then you brew. But I don’t know if they’re like trying to use it. Does that mean they’re, or if they’re pressing it, but

Amber: Are they un ripe or they all are picked green? It’s just These aren’t roasted.

Chris: Yeah, they’re all picked green. Green just references that it’s unroasted, like it’s not turned into the coffee that you would normally expect.

Amber: It smells really good. Steve tasted it. What do you think, Steve?

Steve: Now I’ll admit my wife cracked open the case and started trying a few, and she wasn’t too thrilled about it, but I think I like it more than she did. Like it, I don’t know.

Amber: I like the watermelon flavor.

Steve: I’ve got it really cold too. I don’t know if that made a difference.

Amber: It tastes like a Jolly Rancher to me.= but not that sweet.

Steve: No.

Amber: But like the flavor that I associate with a watermelon Jolly Rancher in my memory, because I can’t remember the last time I ate one.

Chris: Yeah. I’m trying to read here if it’s like organic watermelon juice or what’s in this, but I’m not even seeing. That’s interesting. I’m not even seeing watermelon as an ingredient.

Amber: I know I was having the same thing. It said it uses juice, but there is no watermelon juice harmed in the making of this beverage.

Chris: No, apparently not. Yeah, that’s interesting. I guess natural flavors. So it is like the, it is a derivative flavor of watermelon that’s giving it its, that iconic taste. But yeah, maybe that’s why it tastes like a watermelon Jolly Rancher, because it’s not actual watermelon.

Steve: Yeah. It’s sweet.

Amber: I think it’s pretty good though.

Steve: It’s sweeter than you would think for only having three grams of sugar in it.

Amber: Yeah. I mean, what is that? The agave nectar? And the monk fruit.

Chris: Yeah, the monk fruit gives it that overbearing… Like monk fruit makes a really strong sweet flavor without adding any calories. But I, what I appreciate about this as far as comparing it to other energy drinks is, I think as far as energy drinks go, this one is the one that has tasted the least like medicine to me.

Steve: Yeah.

Chris: Like most of ’em have this weird chemically it doesn’t really taste appealing kind of thing going on. This doesn’t have that.

Amber: Yeah, I think I’m gonna drink this whole can. I typically don’t drink all of whatever beverage we have, but I probably will. I like it.

Steve: I’m just not sure it tastes like watermelon to me.

Amber: What does it taste like to you?

Steve: I don’t know. It’s a mystery. It’s not bad. I mean, if I had I’d probably rate it a soft thumbs up.

Chris: I’m definitely in camp thumbs up as well. I like anything caffeinated, so, and this I don’t find the flavor objectionable, so I’m a thumbs up on this.

And I’m pleased because we still have 10 of them sitting in our fridge. So between me and Amber and, the kids who consume too much caffeine probably will be finishing this case up.

Amber: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give it a thumbs up as well. We’ll see at the end if I agree with the jitter free that it promises on the can in very large lime green letters on the pink background.

But I would say from a flavor perspective, yeah, I like it. I like the ingredients, so we’ll see.

What’s a “micro-business” anyway?

Amber: So we are going to talk today about how much accessibility is enough for micro businesses. I was inspired to have this conversation with you all by a couple of things. One was, there was a conversation I saw this week in post status where somebody was asking for feedback on how to talk to their clients, like very small businesses about accessibility and whether ADA compliance actually mattered or not.

And then I also got caught up on a podcast that our friend Joe Dolson does with WP Builds on accessibility, where Joe was going through a bunch of restaurant websites. And you know, a lot of those are micro businesses. They only have one location. You know, thinking about those. Then I experienced this horrible experience on a form that we’ll probably talk about later on a local business’s website when I was trying to make, fill out their appointment request form.

And so I think it would be really interesting to talk about, you know, what is enough for these small very small businesses? And maybe that’s a good place to start. How would we define micro businesses? I know there’s this European Accessibility Act definition, which is the 10 employees and 2 million euro in revenue.

But when I think of micro businesses that don’t have a lot of money to spend on their website, I don’t think it’s 2 million euro in revenue. So what do you guys think?

Chris: I would say it’s smaller as well. That was my knee jerk reaction in my head when you said, you know, what the EAA defines it as. When in reality I don’t know the latest statistics, but I’ve seen in places that it’s like the overwhelming majority of small businesses in the US gross under a million dollars.

I don’t know if it’s like 85, 90% because there’s so many… Entrepreneurship is in the DNA of the US, right? So it’s like there, there’s these little cottage businesses that don’t even have a physical location where it’s just one person in the family is making stuff on Etsy or doing yard work for all their neighbors or what have you, right?

These sole proprietorship businesses. So I would say they fall in this category. Single location businesses with a small number of employees that are sub a million dollars in annual revenue, I think qualify. So that’s probably going to be, if you’re in like a small to midsize town, that’s probably most of your little main street boutique shops that sell gifts or favors or clothing.

Probably most of those don’t gross, much more than a million, and many of them are probably less than that. And a lot of restaurants too.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, I would probably maybe frame it a little bit around in the context of their resources that they can devote to their marketing or not just the number of people or the revenue, because you can think about say like your local dentist, right?

You have a private, local dentist, and a lot of times that’s owned by one person, but their revenue is probably very high for that one person, and they probably have a team of hygienists like that. But they probably don’t have anybody dedicated to their marketing or to managing their website, or they’ve outsourced the website to some small agency that is niche to, to dentistry. So it could be a micro business just based on who manages the website and is it the owner, is he just doing it in his free time at night or his, you know, his cousin or you know his nephew. That’s the classic story of these small businesses. Or it’s yeah, my nephew built that website right.

Amber: Well, or even even if they are outsourcing it, a lot of times the size business that we’re talking about are outsourcing it to maybe a individual freelance developer or potentially a small micro agency where actually it’s an owner who uses contractors and doesn’t even have any employees themselves.

Or maybe they have one like VA or something that they’ve hired outside the US and so they’re able to pay a much lower salary to have that full-time employee. But it’s still not, you know, like having a full-time web team or marketing. And I like what you say about thinking about the marketing budget.

‘Cause a lot of these people are probably spending, I don’t know, what do we wanna say? 10,000 might be a reach on the initial build and then they’re probably in the like, 60 to $200 a month range thereafter and not probably doing much else.

Steve: Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah.

Amber: Yeah. So, okay. So if that’s who we’re talking about, Chris, do you have any other thoughts about who we’re talking about today?

Chris: Well, I was just going to say if you applied like the rule of thumb of, you know, what percentage the average business spends on their marketing, and we’re talking about businesses that are sub $1 million, that means that they could be spending per year anywhere between, you know, 10 and $90,000 a year on their marketing.

Somewhere in that range depending on the size of their business.

Amber: I am curious ’cause you were in restaurants, like the restaurant that you ran on Nantucket. What was the revenue there on that restaurant? Do you know?

Chris: That was a very big restaurant. Just doing math in my head. I know that it probably made,

I don’t know, 1.5 to $2 million just in the summer months. Because it was a seasonal business and it really staffed up, and that was when most of the money got made. And then I would guess it would be more like a typical small town restaurant for the other, you know, nine months of the year.

So it was probably in like the 2.5 to $3 million a year range. So definitely bigger in context than the micro businesses that we’re talking about, but that also made sense. ‘Cause the staff size of that place in the summer was like 40 people. Where most of them working full-time?

Amber: Yeah. I mean that’s where I think revenue sometimes is misleading on these, because that made a lot and it definitely also would’ve passed that 10 employee threshold.

But just because it brought all that money in does not mean that it actually kept it or had a lot of money to invest in marketing. I mean, that restaurant pretty much relied on foot traffic and Google Ads. It did have a website that I built for it way back when for I think $2,500. I was so excited to get to build and charge that much for that website when I built it.

We all have those stories of the one that you’re like, oh my gosh, that’s so much money. I’m so excited. But like I, you know, the restaurants don’t always have big margins, and so they’re not always really investing a lot, even though their revenue might be high or their employee count might be high.

Chris: Totally.

Are micro-businesses owners thinking about accessibility, yet?

Amber: So do either of you have thoughts about, or can we share just some general background on how we think most of these small businesses that we’re talking about are typically seeing accessibility or what are they doing, currently. If we think they’re doing anything at all. Steve, you go first.

Steve: I mean, if I had to guess and they’re, it’s not top of mind, right? Like they’re going in, like you’re, if you’re talking about a restaurant or a dentist, right? They are professionals at running a restaurant. They’re professionals that running a dentist practice, right? And, there may be some, ADA considerations especially on the restaurant side, to make sure that you have ramps for wheelchairs to be able to access the building and stuff.

But they may not be thinking about that in their digital presence as well. And I think a lot of times what you see is people are somewhat like you know, oblivious or, like when a lawsuit hits or they get a letter or something, it’s I had no idea this was a law. I had no idea I had to conform to this.

Or and then, you know, maybe they say, well, I thought my web design guy was taking care of this, or, it’s not gonna affect me. I’m just one guy. I’m just a small place.

Chris: I do feel like it is human nature to think it’s not gonna happen to me. In, in so many different contexts. And I do think there’s this element of trust and assumption of best practices that’s happening.

When they hire someone or they choose their website platform, they’re kind of assuming, just like if you hired someone to build you a building that, that thing that is being produced for you is going to be built in what they say in the contract language, which is usually a good and workmanlike manner, which I’m using air quotes for our listening audience. Which generally involves some level of quality.

And they like I know that we have in our notes here, this screenshot of the subreddit for small businesses on Reddit. And someone saying, I have, you know, third party claims coverage for liability for this stuff if someone decides to sue me, and we’ll just leave it at that.

Amber: Yeah. I mean, I do think it’s interesting in that same Reddit thread. There was, or in that same Reddit. I don’t even do Reddit. Is it a channel? What is the language on Reddit?

Steve: It’s a subreddit.

Amber: In the subreddit?

Steve: Yeah.

$40k Demand Letters + Micro-Business Website Usability Gripes

Amber: For small business. Yeah. There’s a story here, which I think is sort of interesting, and this says the heading of it is one person business demand letter for ADA non-compliant website.

And the person says, I recently started a business a couple months ago. First few months trying to set everything up from scratch. It is my first business and I still don’t make much profit yet, but things seem to get better each month as it is a start. Yesterday I received an email and a demand letter for $40,000 for my website, not being ADA compliant.

I was not aware of this law and that is my fault for not looking things up before I made the website. They, this person used Shopify. And so they were asking for some feedback and they said, I’m scared because I don’t have money like that, just from my pocket and not responding to the letter is apparently accepting my guilt in silence.

You know, I mean, I think you’re right. And like on that same thread, Steve, there was someone who said. They were asking, you know, do you think about it? And someone said, I don’t. I pray, right? Yeah.

Steve: Yeah. And I mean, even in that same, that person said that, you know, they just to meet with a lawyer was like 400 bucks, right?

Just for, to meet with a lawyer and have a lawyer draft, maybe a response to that letter was a lot of money for this micro business. And it seems like they were caught off guard. Like it was definitely like they just had no idea about these requirements and it kind of harkens back a little bit like what we were talking about with the brick and mortar and you know, Chris talking about, you know, a builder building you a building.

And really there are local laws and permit laws that require buildings to be built in an accessible way. And there’s…

Amber: You get inspections?

Steve: Right, yeah. You have to get inspections. It’s not just that you have to do it that way. It has to actually be inspected after the fact, before they sign off on the permit that it was installed correctly.

I think that’s our place is education. And I think if you’re starting a business, even if it’s a brick and mortar, it’s not digital. Maybe you should take a deep dive and just do a search Chat GPT, on, you know, if I’m gonna put a website on the internet and I have a physical location, what do I need to do?

Chris: Yeah. And, that’s actually a perfect segue because I was going to pose the question what do we think some of the most essential functions are for a small business website. Where your customers are going to discover you this way, or maybe you’re even directing them there for certain things that you’re doing. What does basic accessibility look like?

Amber: Well, I mean, I would highly recommend everyone go watch Joe’s video where he’s looking at restaurant websites because he’s showing some difficulty. And these are all websites that are in the WordPress showcase as like great examples of what you can do with the WordPress. But like in the restaurant website, he’s thinking, and, you know, we’ve all probably done this.

Like I usually search on Google Maps and I look at the ratings, if I’m in a place, I don’t know, I’m like, okay, well this one has four and a half stars. So before we choose to go there, we always look in a menu. And I typically don’t use the menu in Google because it’s usually a screenshot. I have no idea how old it is, or it’s like a picture that someone took of the menu. So I’ll then go to their website and I wanna find the menu. And then you know, you wanna find the prices for the food, what the food is, that kind of stuff.

I think for a lot of businesses you wanna know what hours they’re open, where they’re located, like their address. Sometimes the phone number, can I call a business? I think to me, like that’s some of the basic stuff that when I’m trying to decide to patronize a business, like, where are you? When are you open? What do you offer and how can I contact you?

All right. What about you, Steve? What else do you look for on local websites when you’re personally trying to choose a business?

Steve: Well, I mean, if we’re speaking just personally, what am I looking for, or, from an accessibility standpoint, what would somebody with different abilities than me be looking for?

Those may be two different questions. I know personally I’m kind of the same and I use websites very much for information like anybody would, right? So I don’t like anything getting in the way of my ability to get the information I’m looking for quick, right? So I can’t stand any kind of popup.

Including GDPR popups, cookie notices. If there is one, you better gimme a button to to reject all non-required as quick as possible. And but yeah, I want the address, I want the hours, I want that I’ll actually probab, if I’m going somewhere looking for hours or like the address, I’ll go right to the footer and and if it’s not there, then I get angry and I’m like, okay, where’s the contact us page?

And then if I go to the contact us page and it’s not there, then I’m just like, forget it, you know? So I just kind of want, I want the quickest path as a visual user. Don’t put a bunch of animations in my way, like a bunch of fading up stuff. Like just get to the information as quick as possible.

Amber: I mean, I think that’s a really interesting point about going to the footer to find contact information because I do that too, and I think following convention in web design is actually really important for conversions and helping people find your website useful. And a lot of times, sometimes, and particularly certain industries, you see websites where it’s like they’re trying to be cool, or unique or special.

They don’t wanna seem boring.

But actually, there’s just some stuff that no matter what you should always do, which is have your, if you have a phone that people can accept, it should be in the footer. Or maybe in the header at the top. But it should be in one of those two places consistently on every page.

If you have a, you know, a menu or something that you know people are going to need to access, have it very clearly found in your navigation menu, like a place to find the actual restaurant menu, right? As opposed to burying it somewhere else or using a weird term to find it. What do you think, Chris?

Chris: This is harkening back to something that I think I’ve only mentioned on the podcast one other time, but I remember this era that, and I still see some of these websites where it’s like they’re trying to be edgy, right? And the entire website is this weird floating field where everything that’s clickable or interactable is like moving around subtly.

And the menu’s not up here. There is no footer. All the information is left, or anywhere but center where your eye would go. And I’m always like, why? I would love to put Hotjar or something on one of those websites and see if it what, just, what percentage of people just bounce or the mouse just hovers for a minute and then goes away.

Predictable interface is so critical.

Steve: Yeah. And I would tag on to what the both of you are saying is, whereas if I’m looking for a location or hours of operation, I will, a lot of times will go to that footer. But if I’m looking for like a customer login? Okay, so I won’t mention names, but there’s a premium plugin that we use on a regular basis with client websites and our own websites.

And they have a customer login, but it’s not in the header. So in my head I’m like, I go to the website, I go to the header. Typically, the right hand side will have a customer login and it’s not there. So every time I have to scroll down to the bottom, to the footer and find the customer login, and actually like the first time this happened, and actually a lot of times what I’ll do, I’ll go to the website I just hit command F and start searching for customer login or for login, and then it’ll just, you know, I can just tap to it real quick.

But yeah, having those things where they’re typically expected is pretty huge and not having a customer login in the header is, you know, drives me kind of nuts. Even though I know like plugin websites a lot of times are for bi-use, right? It’s for marketing and it’s for customer you know, a customer portal. And it’s put that in the headers. Don’t make me look for it. Don’t make me work hard.

Amber: Yeah. Well, I think, maybe we should skip to this. One of the things I wanted to talk about was just our pet peeves, and you’ve sort of started with that, Steve yeah.

One of yours is when you can’t find how to log into the site or not following convention, and I’m sure you might have others. I’ll say one of my big pet peeves is PDFs that I have to download to get information like on restaurant websites. And I totally understand why restaurants do this because they have to make the PDF in order to print their menu, and they’re like, oh, it’s less work to put it on the actual website.

But I’m frequently looking at these on my phone. I don’t wanna download some massive PDF and then I have to zoom in on it and swipe all around. I would so much rather have that information on the actual website, which is, I think also better for SEO better for accessibility. I get super annoyed also by, by animations which is an accessibility improvement, but especially on my phone, that whole like swiping up, like I’ll scroll down and then I have to wait for the webpage to catch up with me. It drives me nuts and I’m just like, I don’t think these animations are helping you. But Chris, do you have like big pet peeves on websites that you see that you hate.

Chris: It’s so tied to my identity as a person, and it’s gonna be apparent really quick, but pretty much any recipe blog, if I have to scroll through 90 miles of text fluff that you’ve stuck in there to get SEO juice and ads and everything else in order to be able to see the damn ingredients and what I need to, you know, buy? I’m leaving.

If I’m doing, if I’m scrolling for more than about three seconds I’m gonna look at something else. And honestly, I found myself going to LLMs more often to just get the ingredient lists and information for recipes because it does not make me scroll through miles of useless, fluff content that I don’t want.

And bloggers should take heed of that because I am sure I am not the only person that feels that way.

Amber: I have seen some with the button that’s like jump to recipe at the top. Those are the bloggers I think who have figured that out.

Do you have any other pet peeves, Steve?

Chris: What grinds your gears, Steve?

Steve: Actually, why don’t we just talk about what I do like about websites?

Chris: Is that a shorter list?

Steve: Yeah. I mean, this is a thing for another day, but I actually kind of envisioned what’s it what was it called? Google AMP pages or something? Was that what it was?

Amber: Oh, yeah.

Steve: Where it like takes a webpage and just turns it into this expected similar format for everything. And it actually had a totally text based, like maybe command line browser. And maybe there already is one, but like sometimes I go through experimental phase and I’m a nerd, so like I’ll turn JavaScript off and I’ll turn off image loading and stuff on websites, and you’d be amazed how fast the internet actually is when you turn those things off.

But no, I mean I think it’s kind of in line with popups and stuff where and this is kind of an accessibility thing to think about too with websites, right? The navigation really is one of the most important parts of your website, right? It’s your window to every page on that website. And I personally really hate mega menus because it’s because a mega menu, what it does is it surfaces content from that page.

Maybe not all of it, maybe some of it maybe just featured content into this big, huge, basically a popup that popups, when I hover over a navigation item. And from a cognitive standpoint, in my head I’m thinking, okay, I’m hovering over about us. And I would expect to see you know, our team and you know, like our story or whatever, right?

And I hover over it and I get this big, huge thing that has any layout, an unexpected layout, let’s just say that, right? I can’t predict what that layout will be in my head. And I then have to use cognitive load to then interpret what this is. Why is there a video here? I gotta play a video inside of a dropdown? Why the hell would I wanna do that?

And then maybe there’s text or it’s like about us, and then there’s this intro paragraph of text about us. It was like, well, if I really wanted that, I would’ve just go to the about us page, right? And then maybe there’s two columns of links.

And I’m like, well, okay, now what do I what? This is confusing to me. Just give me a dropdown with links and then if there’s sub links off of those, they come off of those because it’s, for me, it’s expected and it follow and it works that way. And then once I pick what I want and I get to that landing page, then the information will be there.

Amber: Yeah, so I thought of one more pet peeve and then I’m gonna tie this back to accessibility a little bit more. Although this pet peeve is definitely an accessibility one as well. I really hate when it is super hard for me to click on my phone numbers. So, where I’ve found this come into issues is one, if they’re not linked. So they’re not a tell link.

But also sometimes they are, but the tap target size isn’t big enough. Like it’s too narrow. There’s not spacing in between like the text row above it. And in particular, I found this on websites where it’s like a phone number and an email address stacked right next to each other, and I’m like trying to tap the phone number.

And my thumb is like tapping the email and it’s opening my Gmail app, and I’m like, no, I’m trying to call this business. And then I go back and then I’ll try and zoom in. And that’s usually how I do it. But then sometimes I can’t zoom in because they’ve disabled zoom. And it’s just, it’s so frustrating.

And so how I wanna circle back on is we are all typical users, right? And we can see we have full mobility. We can hear what we don’t need captions. We might sometimes prefer them, but we don’t need them. And we get frustrated on these websites. So then I’m thinking about all these millions of people , and what’s gonna happen for them is they don’t know how to turn JavaScript off or block images from loading in their browser like you do Steve, right? Or me, the thing I encountered recently on a forum was that when you focused on a field, the field turned background turned black, but the text turn white, you literally couldn’t see what you were typing.

While I know I can right click and inspect and edit the CSS so I can see what I’m typing in the form, but a typical user doesn’t know how to do that. And so I think this is where it gets frustrating for people with disabilities. Then circling back to our what is enough? I think it would be good to talk about, you know, we know there is some legal requirement, but probably a lot of these laws don’t apply to the business sizes we’re talking about, but they, but it might in some scenarios.

Demand Letters, Lawsuits, Managing Risk as a Micro-Business

Amber: So, what do we think is the risk here of getting a complaint or a lawsuit? I think we should talk about that first. And then let’s talk about what are those things that we expect people to do from an accessibility perspective?

Chris, do you wanna go first?

Chris: I’ll cover risk just because it’s something that I talk about a lot with people that reach out to us that are concerned about it.

But if you think about the stats, right? There’s many, I want to say there’s many hundreds of thousands of businesses in the us like these micro businesses. There’s tons there. It’s a staggering number. There were a little over 5,000, I think accessibility lawsuits last year. According, that actually went to the point of being filed as a lawsuit.

And so if you compare those two numbers I think the risk profile is relatively low overall. If you’re thinking like 5,000 out of hundreds of thousands. Now, granted, that’s happening every year and also depending on your industry, right? So if you’re in e-commerce and you’re operating in New York, California, or Florida, I think your risk profile’s a little higher.

That would be like the one I would say where you might wanna pay extra close attention compared to the average smaller micro business. But really at the end of the day and it’s kind of gross and I don’t like it, but what these law firms are doing is they’re looking at a website, they’re first checking, okay does it have accessibility issues?

Okay, great. Number two, do they look like they make money and could I collect some sort of settlement? And I don’t like that, but that’s kind of the reality. It’s could I make a quick buck? Do they look like they make money? And so if you look like you make money and you have accessibility problems. And maybe you’re also e-commerce, I think you should be paying very close attention.

Others, I think your risk profile is certainly not non-existent, but it is a little lower. But the bigger question is what I want y’all to get to, which is like serving your customers right and being useful and helpful to people because we all know that’s how businesses grow and do well.

Steve: Yeah, and I think on the technical side, I think that you know, what is enough accessibility on your website for your micro business to, to maybe thwart some of these ambulance chasers, and I’m putting that in quotes. I like for accessibility. And you get a let a scary letter that demands a certain amount of money and they know that it’s gonna take a certain amount of money for you to hire a lawyer, right?

And they may be, you know, playing off of that. And it may be cheaper for you to just pay them, but really the, there’s no there’s no insurance that, like another lawyer won’t come after you. So technically what’s enough accessibility? And so we read the thing about the person that was building on top of Shopify, right?

So do you need to become an accessibility professional, know all the WCAG guidelines and all that? No, not necessarily. But like maybe you need to have just a base level of knowledge of what accessibility is. Like, I think a lot of us understand what it is when it comes to a building. You know, it’s a ramp a lot of times into the building.

Just understand that there’s ramps for websites as well and that there, there needs to be those navigation things like that need to be accessible as, as well. So if you’re building on top of a platform like Shopify, right? Contact Shopify and ask them. Do you have documentation on accessibility or you know, if you’re using certain modules or themes built by third party people on Shopify contact them.

Say, Hey, you know, do you have an accessibility statement about your product? You know, can you tell me if I sell stuff with your theme, is that going to be accessible? Is that gonna be some certain level of accessibility? And there’s, you know, Wix and plenty of other platforms that you could reach out to their customer support.

If you’re on WordPress, I would recommend that you go to EqualizeDigital.com/Accessibility-Checker and download our Accessibility Checker plugin. Install that into your website. It will inform you on the level of accessibility of the plugin and themes output on the front end that you’re using.

I think having a basic knowledge that accessibility on the web is a thing, and then take a few steps into asking questions about the technology that you’re using.

Amber: Yeah, I’m glad you threw that in there ’cause I forgot to play our commercial earlier in the episode. So there we go. Know, I think too, so in that conversation, in Post Status, our friend Alex Stein, who is blind he gave some feedback on this, like what is the risk and that kind of stuff.

And he said, and he gave us permission to quote him. He said, “If I come across an inaccessible small timer blog, would I go after them as a blind person? No. If I came across a small business that had an inaccessible website that blocked me from ordering online, would I go after them? Probably not, especially if they offer other options. If they insult me, I might go after them to prove a point. Large business, utility, medical, financial service, any other service? Oh, absolutely.”

He said, “I’d write them some scary emails and advise them to fix their issues.”

And he says that, you know, he’s approached other people and that kind of thing but he does, you know, sort of say bottom line a lot of it depends on how they respond to him and if there’s another way. You know, your website might not be perfect. I think there are things like we talked about earlier, like making sure your contact information, your hours of operation, the key information about your services, that part has to be accessible.

But if there’s some other parts that are not, and you can respond positively to people when they ask for help with the part that’s not, then I think that is gonna go a long way, towards helping protect your business from on a legal standpoint and also providing goodwill with customers.

Chris: I also wanna highlight his, like last sentence of this quote as well.

So, he does say, ” From a pure moral point of view, I would feel really bad if some ambulance chaser went after a small business just because they were an easy mark. But if they, that small business, if they had received dozens of warnings and still couldn’t see the importance, they got what they deserved.”

And so what I would say is, business owner to business owner, right? All three of us are business owners. We’re hopefully talking to some business owners right now. Use your God-given human pattern recognition capabilities. And if you see a pattern of people are complaining about the usability of my website or saying they can’t use it, or I’ve gotten a couple of letters, maybe do something about it before it blows up in your face.

Leading with Morals and Ethics, Our Best Advice for Micro-Businesses

Steve: Yeah, and I would just tag on that. A lot of times in accessibility we talk about. We talk about the legal, the ethical, and the moral right, and then, and a lot of times the legal leads to a lot of pain for everybody. And the person that a lot of times it’s left out at the end of a legal battle is the person with the disability trying to get the stuff they need.

So really the legal actually just harms you, makes lawyers richer and makes, you know, just adds more litigation. And a lot of times it doesn’t net the issues actually being fixed. And then I think on the ethical side, I think a lot of time the ethics do lead to a little bit better of accessibility.

And that’s kind of where I’m, I was kind of leaning on what’s bare minimum you can do? It’s start thinking ethically about what you’re doing on the internet, who’s using it and then finally the moral. And I really think the moral is where we’re gonna make the most strides in accessibility.

If we start looking at this more as these people deserve access to this information just as much as anybody else. It’s all about making the web equal for everybody. Because, you know, like Alex said, like he, he needs to pay his water bill. He needs to get his medical supplies. Why should he be blocked from doing it?

He should be able to if there’s a new restaurant in town that makes this amazing cuisine that somebody told him about, he should be able to go on and do an online order of that restaurant just the same. He shouldn’t be treated as less because his abilities are different than ours.

Amber: Yeah, I think really like thinking about that and putting it into practical standpoint and really just trying to be proactive from the beginning. Whether you are a website owner who’s DIYing or you are a freelancer or a, you know, a small agency that’s building these websites for these small businesses.

Putting that, that moral thought first is very helpful. And then I would just say ask a lot of questions, like Steve said, of any of the software you’re gonna use on the website. Ask if it’s accessible, ask for proof that it’s accessible. Don’t just, you know, take their word for it. Ask them questions like, what, how was it tested?

Was it tested by people with disabilities? What tools do you use to test on a regular basis? That kind of stuff I think is very important. Do you either of you have any final thoughts before we close?

Chris: Oh man, I mean, I, we got so many thoughts out. I guess I would close just to say that if you’re feeling scared, overwhelmed, about this kind of stuff. Whether you’re working in web, worrying about how you’re gonna serve your small business customers with these trends that are happening, or if you’re a small business worrying, you’re gonna get, you know, that’s barely making money and you’re worried you’re gonna get a $40,000 demand letter, like in that quote or that Reddit thread we read.

Find an accessibility professional to talk to and reach out. We’re obviously reachable at EqualizeDigital.Com, but there are plenty of amazing accessibility companies out there. Find ones that are going to help you do real fixes and real work and not slap a bandaid on it because that’s not gonna get you any further along.

And try to find some, a good, honest provider who can kind of take you through this and get you some initial steps. It doesn’t have to be expensive to start, you can actually start very cheaply. Or as Steve pointed out, even for free, with the free version of our software if you’re using WordPress.

Steve: I guess my parting advice would be just because you’re a small business doesn’t mean you have to think small mindedly, right? I think if you’re started a small business that you have some bit of entrepreneurship inside of you and you know, set your business up for success, ask questions about accessibility, just just arm yourself with just a little bit of knowledge. Ask those questions to those vendors that you use and and I think you will be ahead of most small and micro businesses.

Amber: And think about it as an investment in getting more conversions or more customers or more leads because I think that’s absolutely what it is. Thank you both and thank you everyone for listening, and we’ll be back here in two more weeks with another great conversation about accessibility and craft beverages.

Chris: Cheers.

Steve: Bye

Amber: Bye.

Chris: Thanks for listening to Accessibility Craft. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe in your podcast app to get notified when future episodes release. You can find Accessibility Craft on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. And if building accessibility awareness is important to you, please consider rating Accessibility Craft five stars on Apple Podcasts.

Accessibility Craft is produced by Equalize Digital and hosted by Amber Hinds, Chris Hinds and Steve Jones. Steve Jones composed our theme music. Learn how we help make thousands of WordPress websites more accessible at EqualizeDigital.Com.

128: How Much Accessibility is “Enough” for Microbusinesses, Plant Press Clean Caffeine Watermelon Flavor