In the 35th episode of the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast, co-hosts Natalie Garza and Natalie MacLees discuss the critical importance of incorporating digital accessibility into web agency offerings.
Natalie MacLees, an expert with over 20 years of experience, explains the increasing legal requirements for accessible websites, the risks of non-compliance, and the benefits of accessibility, including improved SEO and expanded market reach.
Why Digital Accessibility Is No Longer Optional
Natalie Garza: Hello everybody, and welcome to the AAArdvark Accessibility Podcast. My name’s Natalie Garza. I’m one of the co-hosts, and with me today is,
Natalie MacLees: Natalie MacLees is the other co-host.
Natalie Garza: And she is a digital accessibility expert working in this field for 20-plus years. And so she’s going to walk us through and answer our questions on today’s very important topic, how to incorporate digital accessibility into your offerings as an agency, part one.
So, in this episode, we’re gonna cover why clients should care or will care, or already do care. So starting off, digital accessibility is not optional anymore. Why is that?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, I would argue maybe it never was optional, but I think many people felt that way for sure. Around the world, we’re starting to see more and more laws that require digital accessibility for websites. In some countries and areas, that’s the government websites only. In other ones, it also extends to private websites and just depends exactly where you are.
But we are seeing more and more and more of those laws being passed, requiring accessibility. And then in the United States, we are seeing more and more, lawsuits. Around accessibility when somebody tries to come to your website and use it and they’re not able to do so, you will get a demand letter, and might might have to be, have a court case, you might have a settlement out of court, but it’s gonna cost a lot of money.
And so that’s become a big risk for businesses they need to be aware of. We also see bigger brands who are leading the way basically in this arena are starting to be more proactive about accessibility. So that sets an example for the small and medium sized businesses in this space to also follow suit.
Accessibility Boosts SEO and Expands Your Reach
As we discussed in a recent episode, accessibility also helps to boost the SEO of your website. So a lot of the things that you would do to help make your website accessible are also going to help improve your search engine rankings and things like that, and increase the probability that the site will come up in search engines. So that’s definitely something that anybody who’s got a business and a website is gonna be interested in doing, because they always want to expand their reach and get to as many people as they can.
So there are lots of different reasons that clients might be coming to you asking for accessibility. Maybe for the first time ever, you might have noticed that you have clients coming to you specifically asking for an accessible website, and those are some of the reasons that that’s gonna be really important to them. But then, well, I’ll save that for later.
1.3 Billion Reasons to Care About Accessibility
Natalie Garza: Yeah, I would maybe add on most importantly of all, accessibility at the core is so that people, no matter their abilities, can go to your website and still access all the same content that anybody else can.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. If you’re selling products or services, why would you wanna cut out a portion of the population for such a silly reason because you didn’t make your website accessible, right?
So you’re gonna reach more people just because more people are going to be able to actually use your website or your application if it’s accessible. And a lot of times people think, well, that’s just a small number. But in the US it’s one in four adults have a disability. So we’re talking about a really significant proportion of the population globally. We’re talking about 1.3 billion people. So it’s not a little group.
It’s not, it’s not a little edge case. We’re talking about a pretty significant proportion of your business where you could increase your business, 15 to 25%. Depending on exactly what it is and who you’re serving, by making sure that your website or your services are accessible,
Natalie Garza: Yeah, exactly. It’s like if you have glasses, you fall into that group. I mean, there’s a spectrum, like if your eyesight is really, really bad or if your eyesight is really clear, you still fall into this group, and you could probably benefit from zooming in on your browser. It’s the little things you just don’t realize all the time.
Natalie MacLees: Everybody’s eyesight degrades as they get older, also. So if you think people over 40, people over 50 are gonna be interested in your product, then you should make sure that it’s gonna work for people who might have lower vision than, you know, your average 20-year-old.
Client Expectations vs. Developer Knowledge Gaps
Natalie Garza: Yeah, more and more demand is being seen in this space. And if you’re a digital agency or a web agency making these digital spaces like websites or apps, you may have already gotten somebody asking you, “what is this accessibility thing? How? How do I make my website accessible? I don’t want to get sued.”
So what does that really mean for web agencies these days?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, so clients are gonna probably, if they haven’t already, they’re probably gonna be coming to you with questions. “Hey, is this accessibility thing something I need to be worried about?” Or they might already have decided, “I wanna make sure that my website is accessible.”
Whether you’re building a new website for them, or you build a website for them in the past, they might come to you asking about that.
Like, “Hey, that website you built for me last year, is that accessible because I have some concerns.” I spend some time in some small business groups online, and I see people in there who have, you know, random small businesses, little restaurants, little shops, hair salons, things like that. And they get these demand letters or these lawsuits saying their website’s not accessible and they’re shocked.
Like they had no idea that this was something that they needed to be thinking about, and it leads to a lot of frustration. I think, which is understandable, you know, running a business is, it was pretty hard work, already, and then you have something coming at you outta the blue telling you, you’ve done something wrong and you didn’t even know.
So clients are definitely gonna have questions about it and if a client is hiring you as a professional to build a website for them, they’re trusting you to be the expert in what they need, they’re going to expect that you already know how to handle it.
Which is a little bit unfair because, as we also talked about in earlier episodes, web developers aren’t taught accessibility for the most part in their curricula, like when they’re learning how to be a web developer. That’s not included, and it’s unfair, and it’s something that we have to change, but it does give them this impression, right? That this isn’t something that’s maybe a normal part of the job, when it absolutely is.
So if you are a developer who is in that position, or you run a little agency and you’re in this position where clients are asking about this and you have no experience or knowledge, you have to start taking steps to get yourself and your team trained. So that you’re gonna be able to take care of this because it is very soon, I think, going to be just the way the work is done. Just like you wouldn’t build a client a website that wasn’t responsive in 2025, that just, nobody would do that anymore, you know, 15 or 20 years ago, for sure. Yeah. That wasn’t even a thing.
Why Accessibility Needs to Be Built In, Not Bolted On
But now you wouldn’t build something that wasn’t responsive. You wouldn’t build something that wasn’t search engine optimized. And I think accessibility is gonna be the same way. You wouldn’t build a website unless it was accessible. It’s just the way that it’s done.
So we need to stop treating it as this optional add-on that clients are gonna opt into, we have to stop treating it as something we do at the end. We’ll talk a little bit about that in part two of the episode, and like how you integrate this into your services. And do something that we call “Shift left”.
Like, how do you actually do that? And I think the other important point that I wanna make sure I emphasize is even for the clients who are coming to you for a project who don’t explicitly ask about accessibility, you have to be the professional and be the one who advises them that that is something they need, they might not know to ask for it.
But they absolutely need it because they don’t wanna expose their business to legal risk. They don’t want to decrease the market that they’re reaching by 15 to 25%, right? They don’t want to exclude people unintentionally from their business, and they have no idea that this is something that they need to be thinking about.
And you can be really helpful to them when you bring that up. You are the one who proactively says, “Hey, we need to make sure this website is accessible and here are all the reasons why, and here’s what we need to be thinking about as we build this website.” That will make you stand out among all the other agencies that aren’t telling them about that.
Training Clients to Maintain Accessibility
Natalie Garza: Yeah, and even after you deliver the website, “here’s a checklist that every time you post something new we’re not destroying our work here.”
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Yeah, that was actually one of my favorite parts of doing projects when I was still running my agency doing a little like one hour training session of, “You have to make sure your link text is correct, and you have to make sure your images have alt text and you can’t put white text on a pale yellow background,” to let them know all of the different things that they might inadvertently do that would cause barriers on the site.
So yeah, definitely a handoff training session. If it’s a situation where the client’s gonna be managing, you know, posting their own blog posts or updating their about page, or if they’re gonna be managing content on their own, they need to have some training in how to do that without introducing accessibility issues.
Accessibility Is a Legal, Financial, and Human Rights Issue
Natalie Garza: Yeah. I also wanted to touch on how you said like this is becoming a risk for businesses. ’cause I feel like whenever somebody puts something online, they don’t realize the gravity of it. Like they’re just like, “oh, it’s the wild west. You know, throw on it, throw out anything online.” It’s not a big deal.
But, it’s like if somebody slips and falls inside your brick and mortar building, that’s a risk, but it’s the same thing for online businesses, and I feel like we’re getting there, but we’re not quite there. If somebody can’t check out or if somebody can’t complete a tax form, it kind of carries the same, same, how do you say?
Natalie MacLees: The same legal risk.
Natalie Garza: Yeah, carries about the same risk, so.
Natalie MacLees: Just like you wouldn’t leave a puddle of water, right? Standing on a floor, making it slippery in a store that’s just waiting for something to happen.
And I think having a website. out in the world that’s not accessible, is kind of reflective of the same risk. And I think it even goes a little bit further because it’s not just that you’re incurring this legal risk, it’s that you are actively excluding people from being able to use your service.
Which you’re harming their civil rights and their human rights of equal access to services and information, and I know that it’s not something you’re doing on purpose, and you don’t wanna be doing it, but you don’t even know.
So I think it’s really important that we keep talking about accessibility and keep informing clients about it and letting them know that this is something they need to be thinking about and something that they need to be engaging with an agency, a freelancer, or a web developer who can take care of that and ensure that the website that they build is accessible.
Don’t Wait for Clients to Ask — Be the Expert
Natalie Garza: Yeah. I even like what you said: even if a client doesn’t know that they need this, you need to let them know. And it’s just like if you were to hire a house contractor, like somebody to build your house, and you’re like, all right, build my house.
And you build it without any pipes, without any AC, without anything. And then, at the end, you deliver it, and it’s like, “Well, I didn’t explicitly tell you to build the pipes, but I kind of expected you to.”
Natalie MacLees: Yeah. Yeah. “I didn’t think I had to tell you I wanted electricity!” I thought you were just going to take care of that.
Natalie Garza: Yes. So it’s like delivering a website that takes like 10 seconds to load. The homepage is not responsive. It’s not accessible. It’s like delivering a house without electricity, without pipes, without all the basic necessities that are kind of expected.
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, the burden definitely cannot be on the client to request accessibility. It should be on the professional in the situation to inform them that this is something they need.
Natalie Garza: Yeah. And unfortunately, like you said, it’s not talked about as much as it needs to in the web development space,
Natalie MacLees: Yeah.
Natalie Garza: Alright, you guys, so that was part one of how digital agencies or web agencies can start to incorporate accessibility into their offerings. And starting off with just why is this important? Why should clients care? And why are clients already asking you for this?
Get Started with Accessibility Today
So, where can people go if they want to get started with this accessibility stuff, even before the next episode comes out?
Natalie MacLees: Yeah, well, you can come over to AAArdvark Accessibility. If you’re agency owner, freelancer, web developer, you can create an account, add your homepage for free, scan it, start learning about accessibility. It’s also a great tool if you want to track a development or staging site that you’re building for a client.
Keep track of all those accessibility issues. Or if you want to incorporate accessibility monitoring into your maintenance plans that you offer your customers, which makes them higher value, which means you could earn more money.
Natalie Garza: Yes. So go check out AAArdvarkAccessibility.com and remember to subscribe and follow us for next week’s episode, which is part two, and how to actually incorporate it into your services. So thank you guys for watching. This is episode 35. We will talk to y’all later.
